


Teaching JJ

by katecholamine



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Femslash, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:01:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katecholamine/pseuds/katecholamine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When JJ discovers that Emily is a lesbian, her reaction is a surprise to both of them. And when the two are asked to go undercover as a lesbian couple, will the experience ruin their friendship or drive them closer together than either ever could have dreamed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Woo-hoo! A toast to Girls' Night Out!" JJ screeched, lifting her shot glass in the air and clinking it against Garcia's and Emily's before shaking her blonde hair out of her face, tilting her head back, and downing the contents in one swift gulp.  
  
"Why is it that this one eats like a buffalo all day long and yet _still_ manages to look like a Victoria's Secret model with absolutely _no_ tolerance for alcohol while I have one protein shake for lunch, don't drop a pound, and require half a bottle of vodka before I even approach her level of wasted?" Garcia grumbled after swallowing her own shot.  
  
"Well," Emily replied, using her best Dr. Spencer Reid impression voice, "some people lack the enzyme to properly metabolize alcohol, thereby lowering their tolerance dramatically."  
  
"Nice!" JJ laughed, high-fiving her friend. "How about one more round?"  
  
Garcia and Emily exchanged looks behind her back as JJ leaned forward to call the bartender over.  
  
Emily sighed in dismay. It was her turn. It was her turn to bring up Will.  
  
"Um, sweetie?" she offered gently, placing one hand on her friend's blue sweater. "Remember how angry Will gets when you come home drunk? Remember what happened last time?"  
  
Last time. It still made Emily shudder to think about it, about the phone call she'd received the next morning when JJ was sobbing about how Will had forcefully grabbed her arm and pulled her into bed, nearly waking Henry with his bellowing about "needing to fuck his drunk wife to make sure she hadn't fucked anyone else."  
  
Of course, the very idea was absurd: JJ was more faithful than anyone Emily had ever known. No previous transgressions, no non-monogamous relationships, not even a single one-night stand clouded her past. And yet this was just one more layer of violence in what Emily had long characterized as an emotionally abusive, controlling relationship.  
  
"Well, we can't send her home like this," Garcia remarked pointedly, her bright pink lips frowning so uncharacteristically it momentarily threw Emily for a loop.  
  
But Garcia was right. Knowing what might await JJ at home, they couldn't allow their friend to return to Will in this condition, even if JJ's own intoxication had apparently left her indifferent about or oblivious to the potential consequences.  
  
"I'm definitely over the legal limit myself," Emily admitted. "What if we just got a hotel room upstairs and I called Will to let him know she'll be staying with me?"  
  
"Yeah," Garcia snorted, watching the bartender as he moved toward the three women with another round. "I'm sure Will would be overjoyed at the idea of his wife spending the night with a lesbian."  
  
JJ froze and choked on her vodka, nearly spitting it out all over the table in front of them. "A _what?"_ she asked incredulously, her ocean blue eyes flicking back and forth between Garcia and Emily.  
  
"Not everyone knows, Garcia," Emily managed to utter through gritted teeth, shooting her an angry look.  
  
"But - I thought - I mean, it's JJ ..." Garcia sputtered, before placing her glittery-fingernailed hands over her mouth. "Oh, Emily. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to -"  
  
Despite the initial vehement flash of betrayal that had surged through her, Emily knew deep down that it wasn't Garcia's fault. After all, Emily had come out to her almost immediately, followed by Morgan, and then Reid, and then Rossi, who she was fairly certain had told Hotch. In fact, probably the only one who didn't know about her sexual orientation prior to this point was JJ.  
  
But there was a very good reason for that. A reason that no one on the team was aware of, not even Garcia. A reason that Emily herself hadn't become aware of until JJ married Will and she experienced - for the first time in a very long time - a feeling she couldn't fully identify at first, a feeling she didn't even _want_ to identify at first.  
  
Because that feeling was heartbreak.  
  
"How long have you known?" JJ asked quietly, looking down at her shot glass.  
  
Emily wasn't sure how to answer. "Um, my whole life?"  
  
"Not you," JJ said dismissively, raising her head to stare at Garcia. "You. How long have you known?"  
  
Garcia's eyes widened under her sparkly green glasses. "Um ... for a while ... Like, since Emily joined the team ..."  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?" JJ wanted to know, still unable to meet Emily's gaze. "I thought you were my best friend. All those nights we spent eating popcorn and watching movies in hotel rooms, all those nights we stayed up talking until dawn, why didn't you just tell me?"  
  
"I wasn't sure how you'd react," Emily responded gently. "I had a feeling you'd react like this."  
  
"I'm not 'reacting like this' because you're a lesbian," JJ spat out, her voice choking on the word 'lesbian'. "I'm reacting like this because you lied to me!"  
  
"I never lied to you," Emily insisted. "Whenever we talked about my past relationships, I always said 'they' instead of 'him' or 'her'. I didn't lie ... I just didn't tell you the whole truth."  
  
"I need to use the bathroom," JJ mumbled, nearly falling as she stood up unsteadily, holding onto the wall for leverage as she made her way toward the ladies' room.  
  
Garcia and Emily exchanged knowing glances. "Should I go or -" Garcia asked in a small voice, clearly still upset with herself for unexpectedly outing Emily.  
  
"No." Emily shook her head. "Let me."  
  
When she entered the bathroom, JJ had both hands on one of the sinks, propping herself up while she stared into the mirror morosely. This was a bad sign. This was when she started to transform from "carefree and fun" JJ to "melancholy and tearful" JJ. It rarely happened during Girl's Night Out, but when it did, the confessions about her trapped existence with Will, about their unsatisfying sex life, and her about her regretful wishes that she'd never married him at all, would pour out of her like a sudden storm invading a perfect, sunny day.  
  
Emily waited behind her friend silently until JJ met her eyes in the bathroom mirror. "I didn't tell you because I knew you'd tell Will," she confessed. "And I didn't want Will to know because I knew that he'd make sure to end our friendship and possibly even our working relationship."  
  
"So it was to protect me?" JJ mocked derisively.  
  
"No. It was also to protect myself. To protect myself from losing you." Emily paused and inhaled deeply. "Because - look, I know you're straight and I know you're married, but sometimes we can't help falling in love with the wrong people. And sometimes we're willing to accept whatever we can justifiably have with those people because the alternative, the possibility of losing them completely, is so much worse."  
  
Fuck. Emily was definitely drunk. And careless. And stupid. And she had definitely just ruined their friendship as if she'd crumpled it up into a tiny ball and flushed it down the toilet. Chagrined, she stepped away so JJ couldn't see the flush of pink coloring her face and so she couldn't see the horror she imagined on JJ's.  
  
"You said you knew you were a lesbian your whole life. Is that true?" JJ asked quietly, staring down at the sink.  
  
Emily thought for a moment. "Well ... I guess ... No, not really. I mean, I had crushes on guys when I was growing up, dated plenty of them, but it always felt like something was ... missing. And then when I went to college, I met Stephanie. Despite how hard I tried to fight it, it really was love at first sight. But you know the basic story already. I told you I'd never felt so attracted to someone before, had never experienced pleasure from sex before, had never felt so alive in a relationship before. I just left out the fact that she was a woman when I was telling you about her."  
  
"What if I told you that I've been fighting my feelings for you ever since we met?" JJ whispered to herself.  
  
Emily laughed, struck by the absurdity of the question. "I'd say you were drunk and pissed off and lying to me because I lied to you."  
  
Before her intoxicated mind could process what was happening, JJ stumbled toward her and pressed her lips against Emily's. Hard. Opened her lips and pushed her tongue in Emily's mouth. Whimpered. Continued kissing her. Twisted her tongue around Emily's. Moaned. Pulled back. "Do you still think I'm lying?" she hissed, brushing the dark strands of hair away from Emily's forehead. Those eyes ... those innocent blue eyes ... didn't seem so innocent anymore.  
  
"So if I did this, what would you do?" Emily wondered curiously, tracing one hand gently up and down JJ's inner thigh, leaning forward to kiss JJ's hungry, desperate mouth, before she had her answer, when JJ's legs parted underneath her skirt.  
  
"... I'd want you to do this," JJ groaned boldly, taking Emily's hand by the wrist, unfolding her fingers, and grazing Emily's palm against the damp cotton of her panties, rubbing it back and forth.  
  
Emily was still intoxicated, all right, but it was an intoxication of a very different kind: not the blurry, hazy intoxication of alcohol, but the confident, powerful intoxication of lust.  
  
How long had it been since she'd last felt this? Those first perfect caresses of her deft hands against a woman who had never experienced the all-consuming, exquisite pleasure that only another woman can provide? A woman who - as in JJ's case - had never experienced pleasure with another person at all?  
  
JJ's breathing increased dramatically and her grasp against Emily's wrist tightened as she thrust herself rapidly against the open palm with utter abandon. _She could come like this,_ Emily suddenly realized, flicking her eyes toward the bathroom door, which could fly open at any moment, leaving them both in a humiliating predicament. _But I don't want her to come like this._  
  
She withdrew her hand, despite JJ's protests, and (more to herself than anyone else) uttered a stark reminder: "You're drunk and you're confused - and most of all? You're married with a child. You can't do this. We can't do this."  
  
"I can't go home with my panties soaked!" JJ cried out, her eyes widening in fear. "Do you know what he'll do to me? Do you have any idea?"  
  
"Then we'll get a hotel room for the night. No different than all the other nights we've shared hotel rooms across the state working various cases," Emily reassured her, petting her arm. "He'll trust you with me. And we won't give him any reason not to."  
  
Her voice might have sounded confident and strong, but her willpower was weak. Still, she knew from experience that it would be better for everyone involved if they just went upstairs, fell to sleep, and wrote off this entire incident in the bathroom. Laughingly joked about it later as yet another example of JJ's uncharacteristic drunken behavior.  
  
When they emerged from the bathroom, Garcia handed them each a key card. "I took care of it," she said guiltily, still obviously tormenting herself for telling JJ about Emily's sexual orientation. "I called Will and told him you'd both fallen asleep upstairs already and that it would be a hassle for him to drive out here with Henry, anyway. Kevin's going to pick me up out front and I hope ... I hope you two can talk this out tonight so it doesn't ruin your friendship. 'Cause you're my favorite girls, you know?"  
  
"I know," Emily replied gratefully, kissing her briefly on the cheek. "And I hope so, too."  
  
JJ had already grabbed the key card and headed for the elevator, leaving Emily to endure the long, anxious ride upstairs alone. Fear and desire hammered simultaneously through her heart, half-wishing that JJ would be passed out on the bed when she arrived upstairs, and half-wishing ...  
  
No. She wouldn't allow those fantasies to come alive again. Not after all the hard work she'd put into suppressing them.  
  
And yet when she slipped her key into the slot and saw the green light flash, she couldn't help herself from remembering her first love, Stephanie: the one who'd taught her how to drive in the States, who'd murmured to her, initially in the car and then later, much later, wearing those emerald and gold pajamas, "green means go."  
  
Stephanie, who nearly always wore red toward the end, like the perfect embodiment of a walking stoplight, with the passenger seat occupied by a picturesque boyfriend hanging from her arm. Stephanie, who first introduced her to the concept of love and then to the concept of loss.  
  
Trembling imperceptibly, Emily opened the door and called out in a hushed voice, "JJ? You there?"  
  
JJ was waiting in the bedroom, her tanned arm propped up on one plush white pillow with her blue sweater rolled up at the sleeves and her black skirt pushed up (unintentionally?), barely covering her muscular thighs.  
  
The first words out of her mouth were, "What's it like with a woman, Emily?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily's first chance to teach JJ about what she's been missing all her life.

Something inside of her broke like a dam, and Emily laid down beside JJ, facing her so they were only inches apart and started stroking her arm, lost in memory. "It's more gentle. More tender. There's more ... exploration. No pressure to hurry up and get on with reaching the ultimate satisfaction, because every kiss, every touch, every lick is satisfaction."  
  
JJ shivered and snuggled into her, their lips nearly touching. "That sounds wonderful." She kissed Emily. Kept kissing Emily. Their tongues teasing, twisting, tasting. Their bodies already moving together on the comforter, as Emily slid a bare leg between JJ's thighs and began to rub it slowly back and forth.  
  
"But what about ..." JJ broke the kiss, slight panic entering her voice. "What about all the ... the other stuff?"  
  
The other stuff. Emily knew exactly what she meant: _so do I have to go down on you, because I really can't imagine ever doing that ..._  
  
"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do," Emily assured her, her fingers stroking an erotic rhythm back and forth across JJ's stomach, directly above the hem of her skirt. "And I'll only do the things you want me to do."  
  
"Like this," she added, leaning forward to suck lightly on JJ's neck, containing her own desire in order to ensure she wouldn't leave any bruises for Will to see. "Or this," she continued, pushing JJ's shirt above her head and cupping her breasts underneath her bra, reaching up with one finger to graze over a pebble-hard nipple. "Or this," she murmured, kissing JJ's eager, open mouth while reaching back to unbutton her bra and raising it, along with the sweater, above JJ's head in one swift move.  
  
"You are," Emily moaned in between kisses, her hands busy tracing circles around JJ's breasts, "so fucking beautiful."  
  
"Oh! Ohhhh!" JJ cried out, her deep blue eyes widening when Emily rolled her nipples in between her thumb and forefinger, leaning forward to kiss her ferociously.  
  
Emily knew instinctively that JJ had never been touched like this before. Even in the days preceding Mr. "Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma'am," she'd never been relished like this, never been aroused like this, never been devoured by another who appreciated her amazing body for the delicacy it was. Emily knew because Emily had seen it so many times in the past, in so many lovers who had passed, either returning to their straight lives or embarking on finding love that didn't revolve around desire and lust.  
  
But for tonight, JJ was hers. It was the first time and most likely would be the last time, but that didn't matter. All that mattered right now was that all the fantasies she'd created in her mind, all those times she'd writhed around on her bedspread with one finger rapidly pummeling her clit, were finally becoming a reality.  
  
Emily moved her mouth down to JJ's breasts, licking each of her pink pencil eraser nipples, flicking them with her tongue, taking one in her mouth and sucking. "Kiss me," JJ insisted, and Emily understood immediately that JJ's breasts responded better to manual than oral stimulation. How could anyone ever possibly expect a man to know such a thing? So she kissed and kissed and kissed JJ's mouth, her hands alternating between gentle caresses and pressured pulling on her nipples. JJ had stopped actively kissing her by now, just opening her mouth and panting warm, rapid breaths against Emily's pillowy lips.  
  
When she first reached under JJ's skirt to trace two fingers along the crotch, she was careful. Slow. She didn't want JJ suddenly freaking out and running away. But JJ was so soaked, so wet that Emily's fingertips were damp even just from touching her through her cotton underwear.  
  
And while Emily desperately wanted to rip those panties off and bury her face in JJ's pussy, licking and sucking and devouring the sweetness there, she also knew that Will once tried to go down on her and made a face like he'd "eaten a piece of spoiled fruit." Her earlier experiences with oral sex hadn't been much better, if she'd been telling the truth on that one drunken night in Wyoming when she'd felt so guilty about insisting that the team release the unsub's profile to the media, fueling him to kill three additional adolescent girls merely to bask in the national frenzy of attention, before they'd managed to catch him.  
  
Although JJ had consumed so much alcohol in such a short period of time on that particular evening she was slumped down in her chair, slurring out confession after confession, Emily still remembered every single word she'd uttered. About how she'd never had an orgasm with another man. About how Will practically demanded blowjobs as her wifely duty, but refused to go down on her aside from that one time, leaving her constantly wondering if her scent or her taste was offensive or disgusting. About how she felt like penetration was an invasion. About how her masturbation technique was identical to Emily's: one finger circling the hood of her clitoris repeatedly and at an increasing rate until she came.  
  
That vivid image had certainly been the subject of Emily's own self-pleasuring fantasies for quite some time afterward.  
  
Emily shook her head and brought herself back to the present moment, wanting to savor everything about it. Slowly, tantalizingly, she stroked her fingers back and forth against the soft fabric of JJ's underwear, with JJ moaning and writhing next to her, breathlessly thrusting her hips harder against Emily's fingers. Emily kissed her slack, open mouth and pressed her palm against JJ, who responded by spreading her legs and frantically rubbing herself against the hand so deftly stimulating her.  
  
"Let me take off your panties," Emily murmured, petting her hand soothingly through JJ's blonde hair. "Let me touch you."  
  
It was a risky suggestion and Emily was surprised when JJ not only discarded her panties but unzipped her skirt, allowing full access to the area. This wouldn't be some hidden, invisible tryst underneath layers of clothing, but an experience with the openness and trustfulness of true pleasure.  
  
And true pleasure was exactly what she was going to get.  
  
Continuing to kiss JJ's mouth, Emily placed her right finger on the hood of her clit, drawing slow and easy circles around it. "Faster," JJ begged against Emily's lips. "Faster."  
  
So Emily increased the speed of her finger while JJ threw her head back and moaned, "You know just how to touch me ... How do you know just how to touch me?"  
  
Now would probably not be the best time to remind JJ of their earlier conversation - or to explain how, with most women, a fair amount of exploration was required before discovering the "right" way to pleasure her. No, let JJ think that Emily was some sort of sex goddess. Because, right now, in this moment, she really kind of was - and she absolutely refused to relinquish that, not for anything.  
  
JJ was close. So close. Raising her pelvis, whimpering, breathing rapidly ... Emily waited until JJ's orgasm was imminent and then took her left hand and pinched one of JJ's nipples between her thumb and forefinger. As anticipated, it sent her over the edge. JJ began convulsing wildly, her head thrown back, and Emily could literally feel the throbs pulsating from JJ's clit against her rapidly-moving finger. She leaned forward and opened her mouth against JJ's so that when JJ inhaled deeply, it was Emily exhaling her own breath into those lungs, heightening the intensity of her orgasm. Like they were one body. One soul.  
  
Afterward, JJ collapsed backward, gasping as Emily carefully slid two fingers along the inside of her labia, the moisture dripping down her fingers. JJ's eyes were closed in bliss when Emily surreptitiously placed them in her mouth, swallowing the tart, musky flavor before smearing it all over her lips so when JJ kissed her, she could taste her own delectable fluids. So she could question Will's disgusted reaction. So she could - maybe, hopefully, in time - allow Emily to directly taste her there.  
  
When JJ's desperate, needy mouth met Emily's, their tongues intermingling for only a second, she pulled away, surprised. "Why do you taste different?" she asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.  
  
"Because I licked your juices off my fingers," Emily confessed hesitantly. "Because I wanted to lick you there so badly."  
  
Hurt clouded JJ's eyes. "But after what Will said ..."  
  
"Sweetheart, there are so many things that Will has said and done that are bullshit," Emily replied, her dark eyes flashing with anger. "And when you took your panties off, you were so wet, your scent was everywhere, invading my nostrils, and I knew - I just knew - that you'd taste so fucking good." She leaned forward, coaxing JJ's chin with one hand. "Try it. Kiss me."  
  
At first, JJ just grazed her lips against Emily's, licking her lips curiously. And then she smiled. A bright, relieved, even _delighted_ smile. Her soft mouth attacked Emily's, her tongue exploring every crevice, finally sucking on Emily's own with such abandon that Emily felt herself throbbing with want, with need, and moaned loudly, pushing JJ away. "JJ ... I'm too ... I can't ..."  
  
A conflicted expression appeared on the blonde's face. An expression Emily had seen many times before. To avoid the mere suggestion that she'd forced JJ to do anything she wasn't ready to do, she whispered, "Why don't we just go to sleep? Put your panties and bra back on and I'll take off my dress so we can cuddle like that?"  
  
When JJ nodded, almost gratefully, Emily knew she'd done the right thing. Even if her engorged and pulsating clit was telling her otherwise.  
  
And even if, as her conscience scolded her, it was the only "right thing" she'd done all night.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and JJ take their physical relationship to a level neither could have anticipated.

Emily felt like a teenage boy suffering from what her boyfriends in high school used to call "blue balls" on those nights she reluctantly jerked them off in the backseats of their cars after hours of dry-humping and making out. Her clit was so swollen and engorged it was like an erection that simply would not go away. And the proximity of JJ's body to her own, the feeling of her smooth and perfect skin, combined with the incredible feminine scent of sex wafting into Emily's nostrils, rendered sleep absolutely impossible.  
  
Somehow, the more she tried to make herself fall asleep, the more aroused she became. JJ's tiny whimpers and groans reminded Emily of the sounds she'd made when Emily had kissed and stroked her earlier that night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw images of JJ in that erotic, unparalleled moment of her first orgasm with another person. With her. Every time she opened her eyes, though, she couldn't stop fantasizing about licking and sucking and burying her face between JJ's legs, utterly immersing herself in that warm enticing wetness while making JJ come over and over and over again ...  
  
Until now, she'd never known that it was possible for her clitoris to painfully _ache_ from prolonged arousal. Well, that settled it. She needed to come. With JJ facing away from her and in a deep sleep, she figured it would be easy to remove her arm, slide over to the other side of the bed, and masturbate quickly, relieving this tortuous need while JJ remained completely oblivious.  
  
Emily carefully disentangled herself from JJ, waiting a moment to ensure she hadn't awakened her, and moved over slightly to lay on her back. Her hand slipped underneath her panties and she began to touch herself, her finger moving against her clit at a furious pace, her eyes closed as she re-lived the memory of how she'd stimulated JJ just like this, pretending it was JJ's finger galloping against her swollen clit rather than her own.  
  
And then she felt a hand gripping her wrist.  
  
Emily opened her eyes immediately, and there was JJ, no longer asleep but staring at her with those deep blue oceanic eyes, eyes that conveyed something Emily couldn't quite decipher ...  
  
Guiltily, she pulled her hand out of her panties as the words bubbled out of her. "I'm sorry ... I thought you were asleep ... I just needed it so much ... I didn't mean to wake you up, I just -"  
  
Her monologue was interrupted when JJ leaned forward to kiss her. A deep, sensuous kiss that made Emily groan with desire. "Let me see your breasts," JJ insisted, leaning behind her to unhook her bra and remove it, leaving Emily feeling exposed and uncertain. If JJ had been drunk before, she definitely wasn't drunk now. So why ... ?  
  
Those lingering doubts dissipated from her mind like a candle being extinguished when JJ began to caress her breasts, running her fingertips over Emily's nipples. Pulling at them the way Emily had pulled on hers earlier. Whimpering, past caring about JJ suddenly freaking out and leaving, she murmured, "Your mouth ... I want to feel your mouth on them ..."  
  
Hesitantly, JJ licked one of Emily's breasts, drawing her tongue over a sensitive nipple. When Emily cried out in pleasure, JJ began to suck on it, holding it between her teeth while encircling her tongue around it, inspiring Emily to gasp aloud at the incredible sensation.  
  
Now she needed to come more than ever. But when she slipped her hand back underneath her panties, JJ took hold of her wrist again and asked insecurely, self-consciously, "Can I try?"  
  
Emily nodded, swallowing hard as JJ removed her underwear and placed a finger on her clit, circling it slowly. "Is that how -"  
  
"Yes," Emily moaned. "Just like that. Right there. But faster. Oh god please faster ..."  
  
And it was like her own hand, but not. She was so wet that JJ was having a difficult time keeping her finger in the same place, but it didn't matter. JJ was better at this than most of her lovers had ever been, her eyes alternating between Emily's face and her pussy as she moved her finger faster and faster and faster and Emily's moans turned into wails as she felt it building inside of her, a violent car crash of an orgasm, and suddenly she was coming hard, raising her pelvis while JJ's finger kept masturbating her and her entire body tensed and then shook, the sheer force of her climax reducing the world to that one exquisite place between her legs where she was coming and coming and coming again until she thought she'd never stop coming, until she dropped back down into reality and JJ knew - somehow, instinctively _knew_ \- to stop pummeling her clit, to just lightly and softly start stroking it, causing Emily's body to become rigid once again, legs trembling, as she shuddered through one final, almost gentle orgasm.  
  
When Emily finally caught her breath, she traced her palm down the side of JJ's face, remarking lightly, "So tell me, do you have to be the best at _everything_ you do?"  
  
JJ's eyes filled with tears and immediately Emily sat up, reaching around her back to hold her close, murmuring, "Oh, JJ. Oh, sweetheart. I was kidding."  
  
"It's not that," JJ said, burying her face in Emily's naked shoulder. "It was just ... really emotional for me. I don't know why, but it was."  
  
Hating herself for having to bring up the topic, Emily tentatively wondered, "Is it ... because of Will?"  
  
"No!" JJ exclaimed, pulling away from Emily to stare into her dark, questioning eyes. "Not at all! It's because ... it's because I didn't know I would like it so much. I mean, it's one thing when someone else is doing it to you, but when you're doing it to someone else and you realize that you like it ... that it excites you ... that everything you'd always assumed about yourself has suddenly gone out the window ..." She blushed and looked away, clearly ashamed by her confession.  
  
"I know, baby. I know. It's OK," Emily whispered soothingly, raising her body upward to straddle JJ's leg and hold her even closer. JJ, her breathing labored, took her hands and straightened Emily's legs so their bodies were intermingled, crotch to crotch, as JJ began kissing Emily with a kind of needy intensity, their bodies grinding together in a slow, steady rhythm. As they moved together, exploring each others' mouths with their tongues, Emily unhooked JJ's bra and began to tease her breasts with a feather-light touch of her fingertips.  
  
JJ exhaled deeply. "I want to ... I want to feel you ... How is it that you have this ... this effect ... on me ..."  
  
Emily leaned down and pushed JJ's panties to one side, both women shivering in delight as their warm, damp heat met directly. Grinding harder and faster, humping clit-to-clit, Emily whispered, "You're so wet ... You're so fucking wet."  
  
"I'm wet for you," JJ murmured in response, kissing Emily's mouth greedily as her body continued to gyrate up and down against her lover's. "Only for you."  
  
Emily reached one hand between them, tracing two fingers along JJ's slit, leaning back for a moment to suck the dripping juices away. "Let me taste you there," she practically begged. "Please let me taste you there."  
  
The expression that crossed JJ's face was one of longing mixed with fear. "But what if ... if I don't ... what if I can't ..."  
  
"There's no pressure," Emily reassured her. "If you don't like it, I'll stop. I've just dreamed about it, fantasized about it, for so long - and your taste is driving me absolutely crazy, JJ. Didn't you feel it, pressed up against me? Didn't you feel that gush of wetness when I licked you off my fingers?"  
  
JJ nodded, still visibly conflicted.  
  
"I'll go slow," Emily promised, waiting for JJ to whisper her assent.  
  
And slow she went. First removing JJ's panties and then crouching down to draw long strokes across the skin directly above her damp, matted fur, her inner thighs, smiling to herself when JJ widened her legs and arched her back in the air like a kitten, breathing heavily. She took her time, using her tongue on JJ's outer labia before switching back to her inner thighs and her lower abdomen.  
  
When Emily lightly moved her tongue along JJ's wet heat, purposefully avoiding contact with her clitoris, it was JJ who cried out for more, shoving her body downward and placing her hands on the back of Emily's head, for only a moment, before apologizing breathlessly, "I'm sorry ... that's something guys do ... I didn't mean to ..."  
  
Emily looked up at JJ from between her legs, briefly flicking her tongue against JJ's clit and eliciting a low growl of excitement. "It's something everyone does when they want more. Do you ..." - Emily paused to repeat the same brief flick of her tongue against JJ's swollen clit - "... want more? Tell me, JJ, do you want more?" followed by yet another flick, with more strength and pressure this time.  
  
"Yes," JJ hissed longingly, in a voice so low Emily could barely hear her.  
  
"Then tell me," Emily demanded, her tongue lapping against JJ's clit several times while JJ writhed above her. "Tell me you want more."  
  
She held her hands against JJ's labia, leaving her enlarged clit exposed, teasing it with several brief yet forceful movements of her tongue when she heard JJ cry out, "Yes, I want more! I want more!"  
  
Softly, expertly, Emily sucked on JJ's clit, holding her tongue still against the most sensitive area to make sure she was hitting the perfect spot. When she heard the whimpers and gasps above her, she knew she'd found it and, removing her lips, pushed her tongue against that spot, licking at it over and over again until her tongue began to ache from the effort. JJ's legs were trembling but she was still trying to hold back, still refusing to give herself over entirely to the sensation. So Emily decided to gamble and inserted two fingers into JJ's dripping wet pussy, curling them forward and feeling that soft, striated tissue respond immediately to her pulsating fingertips by growing larger and tougher, like a water balloon primed to burst.  
  
JJ let out a long, throaty wail as Emily continued to stimulate her G-spot while returning to flick her tongue against JJ's clit. And then she could feel it. JJ's cunt tightening around her fingers while Emily continued her linguistic acrobatics against her clit. She was so close. "Come for me, baby," Emily urged, increasing the speed and pressure of her tongue and her fingers, murmuring "mmmmmhhhhh" against her, knowing the vibrations would send her over the edge.  
  
Just how far over the edge, Emily never could have anticipated. JJ's hands gripped the comforter so tightly her knuckles turned white as her clit throbbed and pulsed against Emily's mouth, as the warm gush of salty fluid that squirted out from inside of her and hit Emily's chin, soaking the bedsheets below, as JJ came and came and came, for at least a full minute, her body giving one last final shudder before she pushed Emily's head away, gasping for breath.  
  
Emily moved upward, maneuvering JJ's body to encircle it in a fierce, protective embrace as she kissed her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, whispering soft, comforting words into her ear.  
  
"I ... I'm so disgusting," JJ sobbed suddenly.  
  
Emily pulled back to look into her eyes, disheartened by the tears streaming down her face. "No, you're not!" Emily responded, baffled. "You're beautiful. That was absolutely beautiful."  
  
"But I ... I urinated all over ..."  
  
Oh, _that's_ what this was about. JJ had never had a G-spot orgasm before. Emily shook her head, grinning despite herself. "No, baby. It's not urine. You ejaculated."  
  
"I - I what?" JJ asked incredulously.  
  
"Come here." Emily sat up, gesturing for JJ to follow. She put her nose in the wet spot, deeply inhaling the tart, salty scent. "It's not urine. It's because you had a G-spot orgasm. Go on, smell it yourself and you'll see."  
  
Hesitantly, JJ put her face over the comforter and sniffed, immediately realizing that the liquid wasn't urine. "I ... I _ejaculated?_ Like a guy? I thought that only happened in porn and that it was all fake?"  
  
Emily shook her head. "Nope. You had two kinds of orgasms. A clitoral orgasm from my tongue and a G-spot orgasm from my fingers."  
  
"Doesn't it disgust you, though?" JJ wanted to know, her eyes filling with tears.  
  
"Not at all. The opposite, actually. I think it's so sexy ... so amazing what women's bodies are capable of," Emily mused. "What your body is capable of."  
  
JJ unexpectedly threw her arms around Emily, tears dripping from down her face and onto Emily's shoulders. "I've never felt anything like that before. I think ... I think I'm in love with you, Emily. No, I know I am. I'm in love with you."  
  
Emily froze imperceptibly. Uh-oh. How could she have been so blind, so stupid? It was Sex with Straight Girls 101: do not allow them to confuse orgasms with love, because they will eventually realize that they don't love you: they only love how you make them feel. And then, inevitably, they'll leave you heartbroken.  
  
Emily closed her eyes tightly, running a comforting hand up and down JJ's back. If she had felt so completely heartbroken when JJ had married Will, then she didn't even want to imagine how much worse she would feel when JJ returned to him. When she dismissively wrote Emily off as either a fling or as a training course in sexual discovery.  
  
Because Emily knew that the question wasn't _whether_ JJ would break Emily's heart and shatter her entire world.  
  
The question was when.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and JJ are asked to go undercover on a very surprising case.

Emily was having the most wonderful dream.  
  
JJ's warm tongue licking her between her legs, swallowing the copious amounts of damp fluid there and murmuring appreciative noises that vibrated throughout her core. JJ experimenting with her tongue until she'd discovered that perfect spot, that small pearl hidden in the oyster, flicking against it in a mixture of brief and long strokes, hitting it repeatedly until Emily was almost there, until she wanted to beg for it but found herself unable to open her mouth ...  
  
Until her eyes suddenly flew open and, as her fuzzy vision adjusted itself, she was shocked to discover it wasn't a dream at all.  
  
JJ was actually between her legs, her tongue lapping with complete abandon, her eyes focused on what she was doing, seemingly unaware that Emily had awakened and was on the verge of a tremendous orgasm. The visual of JJ's furrowed brow concentrating on licking her there, combined with the exquisite sensation of her tongue hitting the right spot over and over again, sent those first shockwaves throughout her body, legs trembling, as she came against JJ's mouth, unable to stop the low wail of pleasure accompanying each incredible throb, each shuddering convulsion.  
  
When JJ glanced up at Emily, the expression on her face was a mixture of surprise, shame, and satisfaction. "I thought you were asleep ..." JJ started to explain, turning her head away so Emily couldn't see her guilty blue eyes underneath her blonde hair.  
  
"But ... why, JJ?" Emily asked. "Why?"  
  
JJ was nearly shaking with fear or with regret when she responded in a voice so low Emily had to strain to hear it. "I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about tasting you. I thought maybe if I did it when you were asleep, it wouldn't count."  
  
These games. Emily was so fucking sick of these stupid games. "Wouldn't count toward what, JJ? Wouldn't count toward the number of check marks listed under 'things lesbians do'?"  
  
"I'm not a lesbian!" JJ insisted loudly. "It's only _you!_ You _made_ me do these things!"  
  
"I didn't make you do anything and you know it," Emily retorted, her dark eyes flashing with anger. "I didn't make you kiss me and I certainly didn't make you wait until I was asleep before you ate me out."  
  
She'd used the crudest term possible, and it worked. JJ flinched like she'd been physically struck. "No, I mean ... these feelings ... I never would have had these feelings if it wasn't for you! You've ruined everything. You've ruined _me!"_  
  
"I'm sorry you feel that way," Emily responded quietly. "Maybe I should just drive you home so you can throw your clothes into the washing machine and take a shower before Will wakes up."  
  
JJ nodded, wiping away the tears streaming down her face. "Maybe you should."  
  
"And maybe we should both forget that this ever happened and go back to being friends like before," Emily added dispassionately. Her heart was screaming _No! Don't let her get away! Seduce her back into your arms, you idiot!_ but her brain was smarter than that. Her brain knew that no matter whether they spent one night or one hundred nights together, JJ would never leave Will to be in a same-sex relationship. Not even if she'd truly felt those feelings she'd claimed to feel right before she'd pressed her lips against Emily's for the first time in that bathroom downstairs, less than 24 hours ago and yet also, somehow, a lifetime ago.  
  
It didn't matter that Emily's desire for JJ had grown exponentially now that she'd actually kissed her, touched her, tasted her. All that mattered was the impossibility of ever being more than just a fling, just an experiment. Because if it hurt to hear JJ say these words now, it would hurt far more when Emily had contrived some kind of "happily-ever-after" ending for them, only to watch her dreams implode right in front of her face, like they always did.  
  
Like they always would.  
  
At work on Monday, JJ and Emily awkwardly tried to avoid any and all contact with each other. There were a few unavoidable moments: when, for instance, they both reached for the Splenda simultaneously and their fingers sparked against one another or when Morgan began to describe his weekend fling with some girl who 'couldn't get enough oral, it felt like his tongue had completed a triathlon and their arms brushed accidentally, tingling - and then was the ultimate moment when they both listened to Garcia present a profile of a 'self-hating, closeted lesbian' in Missouri suspected of killing open lesbian couples and Emily pointedly stared at JJ, whose eyes were fixed solidly on the round mahogany desk below.  
  
Emily was only half-listening when Hotch announced, "This is going to be an undercover operation. The unsub stalks his victims for weeks, carefully watching them as they go out on dates to the movies or to gay-friendly bars and, over time, befriends them in some capacity. According to neighbors, the victims felt safe enough in their environment to leave the curtains open and windows unlocked, as all residents of the surrounding neighborhoods do, so local law enforcement believe that she watches them vicariously through the windows on multiple occasions as they engage in sexual activities. Death occurs by direct gunshot wound to the head while the women are engaged in what the unsub believes to be the ultimate act of degradation and heterosexual betrayal: the use of a strap-on to simulate penetration. We believe that the unsub herself sends the victims this penetration harness because, by the time the couple receives it, they do not call the police to report a potential hate crime or a strange gift received in the mail. Moreover, the packages are always hand-delivered and the boxes removed afterward, most likely to protect the unsub's identity. Because the victims were all relatively new to the area and spent substantial time socializing, we've tried to cross-reference lists of social contacts but there are far too many names to sort through."  
  
"That's small town life for you," JJ muttered to herself.  
  
Emily chewed on her pencil thoughtfully. "But we're talking about a small town in the Midwest. Surely there had to be some backlash about openly lesbian couples moving into town?"  
  
"Surprisingly not," Spencer responded, brushing his hair out of his face. "Since the foreclosure crisis, the number of same-sex couples looking for real estate in small towns has skyrocketed. Actually, gay men far outnumber gay women in this particular town and while church protests, along with minor vandalism and threatening letters and phone calls are common when gay men move in, the same doesn't seem to apply to lesbian couples. This is perhaps related to the myth of the predatory gay male, which hasn't really been associated with gay women, thereby rendering them generally less threatening to the religious community as a whole."  
  
"... Except to this unsub," Rossi added. "Now, we're not sure of the underlying motivation behind these murders. Perhaps she was seduced into a same-sex relationship and is projecting her sense of shame or guilt onto these couples. Perhaps she is a closeted lesbian raised in this town who has never been afforded the opportunity to act on her feelings due to the gossipy mentality that would almost certainly label her and her family as outsiders, despite their hypocritical acceptance of those 'from away' who choose to settle down there. Or perhaps she was betrayed by a female lover who chose to leave her for a man - hence the concept of penetration between women serving as the ultimate reminder of her hidden heartbreak. A heartbreak she could never speak of, at the risk of being outed and ostracized by the community."  
  
"And it should also be noted that it was not the traditionally dominant partner wearing the harness; it was the more submissive one," Spencer noted. "This indicates both a sense of helplessness and of rage: the dominant partner is, for once, rendered submissive, perhaps fulfilling a revenge fantasy that the unsub was unable to achieve in her personal life."  
  
Visibly uncomfortable, JJ coughed and asked, "So how are we going to play this? Increased surveillance on lesbian households? Encouraging these couples to enhance security measures like closing their curtains and having locks installed on the windows, along with an alarm system?"  
  
Hotch shook his head. "There are too many couples in the town to provide the kind of surveillance we'd need and the FBI is unwilling to pay for those measures until it has been established as a hate crime. If the unsub had written threatening letters or made threatening phone calls directly linking the murders to the sexual orientation of the victims, it would fall under the hate crimes statute. Because we can only provide a behavioral profile that these crimes are related to discrimination, the hate crimes task force has refused to cooperate. Moreover, any lesbian couple - whether or not they draw their shades or install window guards and high-tech alarms - is at risk, merely by their presence in the community. The last couple killed, Maureen Downey and Alyssa Forest, did take such measures and yet still either had a package left on their doorstep containing the harness or accepted it directly as a gift from someone they trusted."  
  
"Besides," Reid added, his leg restlessly moving up and down, "one of the most popular stores in town sells X-ray binoculars that can easily see through curtains. They also sell guns, alarm-disabling software, and hidden wireless video cameras that are activated by motion and shut off either automatically when motion ceases, such as, for example, when a couple has gone to sleep, or manually, such as when sexual activity has ceased. The area is so remote that every phone and wireless connection operates on the same frequency, making it impossible to trace these cameras by an individual IP address."  
  
"But there has to be data on the number of purchases of this kind of surveillance," Emily said, frowning. "I mean, how many people really need X-ray binoculars?"  
  
"Um, try just about everyone who lives in this town, sweetheart?" Garcia sighed, her fingers clicking against the keyboard. "This is a hunting town, where X-ray binoculars are apparently invaluable when hunting in a dense forest. And the motion detector video cameras are often used on some of the more isolated properties to chase away grazing deer and wild boar. A lot of homes have several of these cameras pointed in different directions to capture the entirety of the property. So we're not going to find her through their little Boy Scouts R Us store, I can tell you that."  
  
"What about arrests for peeping in windows?" JJ asked. "With all that technology, there have to be people using it for more than just hunting and protection of property."  
  
"When I spoke to the Chief of D's, he informed me that while there was a spike in the number of adolescent boys looking into bedroom windows after the goggles were introduced, he decided to speak to their parents directly rather than tarnish their records with a juvenile sex offense, since they were, in his words, just boys being boys," Hotch remarked, frowning.  
  
"Providing a new breeding ground for sex offenders." Emily rolled her eyes. "Well, that's just great."  
  
"So what's the plan, then?" JJ wanted to know, furrowing her brow. "It seems like we can't really be of much help to them."  
  
"We can if we send in two undercover agents posing as lesbians," Hotch said quietly.  
  
"Wait, but the only female agents on this team are -" JJ began to object, visibly panicked.  
  
"It would be against FBI procedure to suggest the use of sex in an investigation," Hotch interrupted. "That being said, it would also be against FBI procedure to spend tax dollars on a highly secretive mission doomed to fail because the agents did not fully assume the roles required of them by the undercover operation."  
  
"Oh, man. I cannot _wait_ to watch this!" Morgan exclaimed gleefully, rubbing his hands together.  
  
"You won't be," Hotch sternly informed him. "The cabin we've decided to use will not be undergoing traditional surveillance measures. It is only on the night that the package is received that you will send out a text message alerting us to the imminent threat. This is the sole detail we've managed to withhold from the media and the one that we believe will lead us to the unsub's capture. Our presence at the cabin would most likely just scare her away and lead her to search for a new target or perhaps even a new town. Moreover, I'm astutely aware that having the team watching you would make it extraordinarily difficult to engage in ... activities ... which will already be extraordinarily difficult for you."  
  
Emily briefly snuck a glance at JJ, who was biting hard on the inside of her cheeks, her hands clenched so tightly that her fists were turning white.  
  
"That being said," Hotch continued, "if, at any point, you feel as though you're in danger or that you can no longer participate in the mission, you will send us a text message and we will cease all operations immediately."  
  
"For your protection, we've decided it would be best to text you every night between 10 and 11 pm, which is the time the coroner estimates that each of the murders occurred. We will simply write, 'How's it going?' and you are not to respond with sentences or even words. Merely hit random keys on your iPhone and press send. Once receipt has been confirmed, delete the conversation. If you are in trouble or want to end the operation, you will text us with a complete word. Any complete word - even a word like 'an' or 'or' will be sufficient for us to move in with a SWAT team and local PD. Such a text can be sent at any time, day or night, and our response will be swift and immediate," Rossi instructed them.  
  
"Oh, and one more thing," Hotch added. "You are expected to become an active part of the community, partially so that we can engage in surveillance and partially to be accepted within the community. Ladies' Night Out on Saturday at the gay-friendly bar and dinner at one of the five restaurants on the main street followed by Indie Movie Tuesday will become your two weekly date nights. Separately, you will attend local organizations and groups such as removing trash from the surrounding forests, joining the local book club, attending their Second Amendment Rights meetings ..."  
  
"Why separately?" Emily wanted to know. "Won't it be riskier to separate us?"  
  
"No. It will make your partnership more plausible and it will allow you to get to know the local community on an individual basis. Expect unannounced visitors dropping off homemade goods - visitors you will invite inside for a cup of tea. Expect dinner invitations, which you will attend together. And expect to encounter some friction."  
  
"Oh, they'll be encountering friction, all right ..." Morgan said to himself, grinning ear to ear.  
  
"Agent Morgan, if you cannot cooperate in this assignment as a trained professional of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, you can easily be placed elsewhere," Hotch warned, his eyes flashing with anger.  
  
"No, sir. That won't be necessary, sir," Morgan replied immediately.  
  
"We're going to fly commercially later this evening. You two, however, will be driving a U-Haul with empty boxes inside from D.C. to Missouri. Although the house has been furnished, the arrival of two newcomers without any personal belongings is certain to arouse suspicion. We'll expect your arrival on Friday, so you can book rooms in motels on the way and develop your personal story, from your names to how you met and fell in love to where you're from to your occupations, and it will give you some time before reaching your destination to try and become comfortable with each other in a more ... intimate way."  
  
The team dispersed, leaving only JJ and Emily sitting at that table in silence.  
  
In a low voice, Emily murmured, "Listen, JJ, if you want to refuse to do this, I completely understand. Especially after what happened on Friday night."  
  
JJ kept her eyes fixed on her perfectly-manicured fingernails for a moment before looking up to meet Emily's gaze. She leaned in, so closely their lips almost touched, and whispered, "Sometimes wishes do come true. Even if they're not exactly how you imagined they'd happen."  
  
With that, she shoved her chair back and walked out of the room, leaving Emily sitting there, stunned.  
  
Her open-mouthed shock quickly transformed into a huge, beaming grin. This was definitely going to be one assignment that they'd never forget.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the car, Emily and JJ discuss and enact the circumstances under which their undercover aliases met and fell in love.

Initially, the car ride was eerily quiet, with JJ keeping her eyes focused on the road ahead of her and Emily pointedly staring out the window while '90s music blared from the radio.  
  
After about thirty minutes of this, Emily reached forward to lower the volume and offered, "Maybe we should work on developing our aliases."  
  
"Fine."  
  
Emily was flummoxed. What had happened to the woman back at the BAU who had very nearly kissed her, whispering words about how excited she was to be going undercover as Emily's lesbian girlfriend?  
  
"OK, so give me a name that fits," she suggested, ignoring JJ's icy tone.  
  
JJ looked at her askance before turning her eyes back to the road in front of them. "Olivia Bennett."  
  
Emily let out a short bark of laughter, covering her smile when JJ glanced back over and snapped defensively, "What? What's so funny about that? You asked for a name that fits and I gave you one."  
  
"Um, been watching _Special Victims Unit_ much, Alexandra Cabot?" Emily asked pointedly.  
  
JJ covered her mouth for a moment, unable to suppress her sudden giggling fit. "Oh, my God, her name's 'Olivia Benson'! You're so right! I don't know what it is about her, but she's always reminded me of you."  
  
Relieved that the mood had been lightened - for the moment, at least - Emily cocked her head, her dark hair falling over her right shoulder, and offered, "Actually, Alexandra is a good name for you, I think. Let's focus on last names afterward. Give me a good first name. Alexandra and ..."  
  
JJ bit her lip thoughtfully. "Alexandra and Lauren?"  
  
With that name - with the reminder of all she'd endured when she'd lived through the horror of bearing that name - Emily let out an unexpected sob, covering her face to prevent JJ to see the unstoppable stream of tears cascading down her face.  
  
"Oh, Emily. Oh, shit. I wasn't thinking of - Please, Emily, it was just the first name that came into my head; it wasn't ... I wasn't ..."  
  
The car abruptly swerved onto the shoulder, lights flashing. Emily looked up from beneath her fingers and, through her tears, managed to say, "You know that's illegal on this highway, right?"  
  
"We're FBI agents." JJ rolled her eyes.  
  
"No, we're not," Emily insisted firmly, forgetting about JJ's earlier mishap about Doyle. He was dead, except in her memories, whereas any further mishaps in the present could endanger both of their lives. "You're Alexandra Brewster, graduate of the University of Central Florida, near the suburb of Orlando where you were raised. You obtained a bachelor's degree in business, and I'm ... I'm ..."  
  
"Vivian Cook, graduate of New York University, also near where you were raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with a degree in literature. Your parents wanted you to be a doctor but you decided to pursue your PhD at Columbia and, after being rejected by one major publisher after another for several years, you did the one thing you promised yourself you'd never do and used your parents' connections to obtain a temporary teaching position. That's how we met. I was forced to take one of your classes to fulfill my MBA requirements and I fell in love with you at first sight," JJ continued spontaneously. "Unlike your other students, I hadn't read your local or small-print publications. So, unlike them, I had no idea you might be a lesbian. There were rumors, of course, but that's the way it always was for a single professor in her late twenties who seemed to have no life outside of work and who had cut off all ties with an extremely wealthy and prominent family."  
  
"... which I was forced to do when a colleague in my department mailed them my explicit writings about my same-sex relationships," Emily interjected.  
  
"And then one day, after class, you asked me to stay late. I didn't want to, because I didn't really see the point of literature when I was going to make it big in business - and because I was fighting my attraction to you, of course."  
  
"I'd noticed you from the very first class. Between your obvious disinterest in the material plus the fact that you always dressed like a professional, unlike my other grad students, I couldn't _not_ notice you. And I wanted you from the moment I laid eyes on you," Emily added, her memories of Ian Doyle now long gone and her focus entirely diverted to this entertaining game of inventing a completely separate life for herself. For both of them. "I could tell you were annoyed when I asked, _Ms. Brewster, may I speak with you for a moment after class?_ You even rolled your eyes as you sweetly answered, _yes, ma'am_ , assuming you were in trouble over a class that didn't even matter to you. So you were completely surprised when I told you that your analytic writing was the strongest in the class and when I urged you to reconsider your focus."  
  
"... and I answered sarcastically, _what, so I can end up like you, without a book deal or any major magazine articles and only a temporary teaching gig with no hope of ever becoming a professor? I don't think so._ You were hurt - I knew I'd hurt you - but you didn't show it."  
  
"That's when I leaned forward," Emily murmured, brushing her hand against JJ's jeans for a second, causing her to jump in surprise, "and picked a piece of lint of your skirt. You jumped, just like that. So I said, very innocently, _I'm sorry. I thought you would have wanted me to remove that._ But I kept my hand where it was and started stroking your thigh, exactly like I'm doing now. I knew I was taking a huge risk, professionally and personally, but I didn't care. Because you were right. Because I had nothing else to lose."  
  
"And I wanted it ... but I didn't want it, at the same time," JJ whispered, her eyes fixated on the place where Emily was stroking her inner thigh. "I was only twenty-two. I was so confused."  
  
"Would you have been less confused at, say, twenty-nine?" Emily asked breathlessly. Out of character now.  
  
"No. The feelings would have been the same."  
  
"Did you ever ask me to stop, J ... Alexandra?" Emily wanted to know.  
  
"No, Vivian. Or Ms. Cook, as I guess I called you then. I didn't. I stood there like a deer frozen in the headlights, just watching as you stroked me, your fingers moving upward. Mmmm ... I spread my legs slightly. They were trembling so much I thought I'd fall down."  
  
"I asked you if you'd be more comfortable sitting on my lap. You nodded," Emily continued, breathing harder.  
  
To her surprise, JJ crawled over to the passenger side and sat in Emily's lap, letting her unzip and pull down her jeans so they were around her ankles. "That's when I put my palm between us and began to rub you, exactly like this. You loved it. I could tell you loved it. You started grinding against my hand, just like you're doing now."  
  
"I was feeling ... so many mixed feelings at once," JJ offered, trying to continue the story. "I wanted to kiss you."  
  
"But you didn't," Emily added quickly when JJ began to move her mouth toward Emily's. "You didn't want to be responsible for anything that happened between us. And I didn't want to go too far, so I never reached inside your panties, even though I wanted to ... to touch you directly so badly ..."  
  
JJ let out a distinct groan of disappointment. "So ... you just kept stroking me over my underwear?"  
  
"Yes. But I pressed my palm hard against your clit, rubbing forcefully. You lifted your hips right when I switched over to my fingers. I put my middle and third fingers where I could feel you were most aroused and began to move them in circles. And you were responding ..."  
  
"Oh, Em ... Oh, Ms. Cook," JJ moaned.  
  
"I did it until you ..."  
  
Before Emily could finish her sentence, JJ cried out, "I'm coming!" as her body shook and her fists clenched into tight balls against the armrest. She rode the climax out, without a word from Emily, eventually collapsing forward.  
  
"And then I leaned back and kissed you," JJ continued, raising her head to meet Emily's lips, once Emily had removed her hand and she'd recovered from her orgasm.  
  
"No," Emily replied quickly, moving away. "You didn't, Alexandra. You pulled down your skirt and you ran out of that room, leaving me wondering if I'd just ruined my pathetic, meager job over you."  
  
JJ reluctantly pulled up her jeans, visibly disappointed, and returned to the driver's side, not speaking.  
  
"You stopped attending class. You'd obtain the material from another student and have them deliver your papers on the due date. For your final project, you chose to analyze lesbian relationships in contemporary literature, concluding that most of them contained the underlying theme of the experienced, predatory temptress and the young, confused first-timer who was seduced into an encounter or a relationship by a sudden magnetic attraction. Your final sentence was a question: 'if the innocent lamb hadn't been stalked and ultimately consumed by the scheming wolf, would she have ever recognized those hidden desires at all - and, more importantly, would she have been better off without such an awakening?'" Emily paused. "It was the weakest sentence you'd ever written in a paper before and it was a clear message to me. So I gave you a C-plus, by far the lowest grade I'd ever given you."  
  
"Of course, I wanted to know why. But it was also an excuse to see you," JJ continued, back in character, "because I still had an A-minus in a class that didn't even count toward my MBA, where I'd received straight A's and had already set my sights on some amazing post-grad prospects."  
  
"I was waiting for you," Emily said, staring out the window. "I waited in my office for an extra hour, hoping you'd show up. And you did. You were shaking. You closed the door behind you and you said ..."  
  
" _I can't stop thinking about you_ ," JJ interrupted, her own voice trembling. " _I can't make myself stop wanting you,_ Emily ... I mean, _Ms. Cook._ "  
  
"I told you to call me by my first name. To call me Vivian. I stroked your thigh, just like I did in that classroom a few months earlier. Just like I'm doing now. Your back arched exactly like that. That's when I knew you wanted this. When I knew you wanted me." Emily watched as JJ's legs widened, relishing the desperate need in her sky blue eyes when she looked directly at Emily. "I asked you if you wanted to have a glass of wine at my apartment to further explore some of the issues in your term paper."  
  
"I said yes," JJ blurted out. "Please tell me I said yes."  
  
"Of course you said yes, Alexandra. And now that we've spent all this time discussing how we met, I'm so turned on by the memories of those first experiences I don't think I can take it any longer. What do you think about stopping at a motel room for a few hours at the next exit?"  
  
Emily could tell that JJ found it unnerving: the ease with which she'd developed her newfound persona and managed to stay true to it. But they were going undercover. There was no room for mistakes. So, as JJ pulled off the shoulder of the highway, Emily murmured, "That's where we left Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau. Right there. From now on, it's just you and me: Alexandra Brewster and Vivian Cook. Can you handle that?"  
  
JJ nodded with some visible trepidation, until she felt Emily's warm breath on her neck. "Then you'd better find a motel soon, Alexandra, because if you don't, I might have to start touching myself right here in the car. I want you so much right now."  
  
"I want you, too ... Vivian," JJ answered.  
  
It was official.  
  
Their undercover love story had begun.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stop at a motel gets steamy ...

In an attempt to divert her focus from the uncomfortable, increasingly-slick wetness in her panties, Emily e-mailed Hotch with their basic cover story, asking him to leave supporting documentation in their mailbox, immediately realizing that she'd omitted one crucial detail: their employment history. "It's going to be wonderful to live in the country after so much time in New York City, isn't it, Alexandra? I mean, just think about it: no more stressing over whether I'll find another freelance editorial job, no more nights where you can't sleep because you're questioning the morality of the business plan you just presented to some corrupt pharmaceutical company so you can protect them from the inevitable litigation they'll face once the drug has been approved and marketed to the public ..."  
  
JJ nodded demurely and when Emily clicked "send," she received a text message back within minutes. There were no words, only a cell phone image of a typewritten notice from a "Spencer Reade" asking members of the community to hire him for assistance in tending to their gardens so he could save enough money to attend college while also serving as a part-time live-in caretaker to a "Mrs. Parsons." The listed address was right next door to the home where JJ and Emily would be staying.  
  
Although it was somewhat unnerving to consider the possibility that Spencer might interrupt them in a moment of intimacy, Emily also knew that his proximity to their house would provide them with an additional sense of security while still allowing them to feel comfortable enough to fully enact their roles as lesbian lovers. When she considered his reaction to seeing them kiss one another, though, she had to suppress a smirk. Poor Spencer's head would probably explode!  
  
After JJ reached the first exit since their unexpected stop on the shoulder of the highway and pulled into a parking space of the nearest truck stop motel, Emily showed her the photo. "I think we should hire him, don't you, sweetheart?"  
  
JJ blinked her wide blue eyes, her gaze traveling from Emily's face back down to the snapshot on the phone several times, before she nodded in agreement, stammering, "Since we don't ... don't have any experience in gardening, it will be nice to have Sp ... to have someone right next door to help us out."  
  
Emily smiled in relief. JJ had already started to become Alexandra Brewster, even after receiving only minimal training from Emily herself, the master of undercover disguises. She'd just have to remain alert - _extremely_ alert - to any signs that JJ had lost herself completely in the assignment. Spencer's presence would provide invaluable, she already knew: both as a constant reminder of why they were there in the first place and as a way of communicating with the team via the exchange of handwritten notes. It would be Emily's responsibility to handle that aspect of the operation, she decided, since moving from one alias to another had never been problematic for her before.  
  
Of course, she'd never allowed her true feelings and desires to play a role in her undercover operations before, either. And, as much as she tried to deny it, there was a part of her that did desperately want JJ to lose herself completely in the assignment, to fall in love with the person underneath the fictional mask Emily had been forced to wear. The mask that she could only remove during sex, the mask that would leave her perpetually wondering if JJ remembered that night they shared before this case, if JJ knew that it was Emily Prentiss and not Vivian Cook making love to her - and, even worse, perpetually wondering if she was making love to Jennifer Jareau or Alexandra Brewster, hoping against hope that it was the former and not the latter.   
  
Emily shook her head harshly, banishing those thoughts from her mind as her black hair fluttered around her shoulders. "I'll go get the key," she offered to a somewhat-shaken JJ, who was undoubtedly having difficulty reconciling her new self as Alexandra Brewster with the intrusion of her real life as an FBI agent abruptly intervening in the transition.  
  
When Emily returned and held up the keys, smiling, she saw JJ sigh with dismay before reluctantly turning off the engine and locking the doors to the car, trailing sluggishly behind her, like someone being led to the electric chair rather than to a motel bedroom.  
  
Shit. This wasn't good. Whatever erotic chemistry they'd experienced earlier had dissipated with just one text message. Emily was going to have to bring it back, and fast.  
  
They entered the room and Emily said casually, "Why don't you lay down on the bed and I'll give you a massage? You must be exhausted after all of that driving."  
  
JJ nodded tentatively, relief flooding her eyes.  
  
Emily found herself more than content with crouching over JJ's back as she pulled off her jeans and shirt, spared the conflicted expression she feared witnessing on the blonde woman's face as Emily undressed her. She didn't want to see that expression. Didn't want to know it was there. Didn't want to believe it could still be there, despite the very realistic fact that she and JJ had shared only one night together prior to this case. One night where JJ was intoxicated and uninhibited versus all of the sober nights she'd spent in her husband's arms. It was a blip on the screen. It could have been nothing or it could have been everything, and after this assignment, she might never have the chance to find out which.  
  
Lost in her thoughts, Emily started slow. Massaging JJ's shoulders, her arms, her upper back, eventually permitting her fingers to flutter lightly down JJ's tan skin to massage her waist and her lower back. Moving her firm, gentle hands down to JJ's feet and slowly working her way back up to JJ's thighs, elated when she reached over to stroke two fingers along the crotch of JJ's panties and felt the unmistakable dampness there.  
  
"Does that feel good?" Emily asked in a low voice.  
  
"So good," JJ whispered quietly.  
  
Emily began kissing every spot where her fingers had touched, repeating the same pattern. Sometimes she merely pressed her lips to JJ's smooth skin and exhaled her warm breath onto it and sometimes she tenderly and briefly drew small circles with her tongue against the flesh below her. By the time Emily reached her inner thighs, JJ was squirming, her hands balled up into tiny fists.  
  
After Emily carefully unhooked JJ's bra, sliding it down her arms and discarding it onto the floor next to the bed, JJ turned over immediately, grasping Emily's palms in her own and placing one on each of her breasts. "Massage me there," she begged.  
  
So Emily did. Initially, just lightly squeezing them against her palms, occasionally allowing her thumbs to stray across JJ's hard pink nipples, until JJ pleaded with her for more. It was then that Emily dared to lean down and kiss that beautiful, soft mouth, her own arousal increasing exponentially when she found herself met by an eager tongue, twisting and swirling against her own.  
  
Pulling back, rubbing each of JJ's nipples between her thumb and forefinger, Emily asked innocently, "Maybe there's somewhere else you'd like to be massaged ... Alexandra?"  
  
"Yes," JJ moaned. "Yes."  
  
Emily reached underneath JJ's panties and drew feather-light circles around her clit, still kissing and kissing and kissing her mouth. It was addictive and it was sensual and it was incredible. She could kiss those lips forever.  
  
JJ broke away, turning her head sideways on the pillow as she cried out, "Faster! Mmmnnnhhh ... I need you to do it faster!"  
  
"Like this?" Emily murmured, her finger pummeling JJ's clit. "Do you like it like this?"  
  
"Yes, yes, just like that!" JJ encouraged her, eyes half-closed and pelvis gyrating up and down. "Oh, god ... Oh, oh, oh ... Ohhhhhhhh god! I'm so close ... Please god make me come ... Oh please ... Vivian!"  
  
She'd passed the test. Managed to remain in character even in the throes of ecstasy. Emily felt a sharp sting of disappointment, but that didn't matter now. That _couldn't_ matter now. So, as a reward, Emily lowered her head to JJ's pussy and began licking and sucking with abandon, burying her nose in JJ's tart, erotic scent and inhaling deeply. When she rolled JJ's clit between her fingers while continuing to flick her tongue against it, JJ groaned and began to tremble. Those trembles quickly became shakes, and JJ howled as her body crashed upward against Emily's teeth, who continued to suck and suck and suck until JJ finally had to push her head away, legs thrashing, as she leaned back against the pillow with her eyes closed. Like an angel.  
  
Quickly, Emily scurried up the bed to kiss her, her arousal growing to unprecedented levels when she felt JJ's tongue thrusting against her own, when she heard JJ's soft whimpers of excitement as she tasted herself there. Despite the barrier of her own clothing separating their bodies, Emily still couldn't prevent herself from grinding rhythmically against JJ, increasing her speed when JJ wrapped her legs around Emily and reached her soft hands underneath Emily's shirt, her bra, to cup those swollen breasts in her hand, mercilessly pulling at her nipples until Emily couldn't take it anymore. Her heart jack-hammering in her chest, she sat up and removed her shirt and her bra while JJ's hands rapidly unbuttoned and unzipped her pants. Those, too, were tossed beside the bed.  
  
"I'm going to take off my panties and sit on your face," Emily growled.  
  
"Sit on my - what? Wait, what do you -" JJ asked, alarm and confusion registering in her tone.  
  
"Just stick your tongue out," Emily instructed her, rubbing her palm lovingly against JJ's cheek, "and I'll kneel above you while you lick me. While you bury your face in my scent, in my taste. Don't you want to do that, Alexandra? Don't you want me to smear my wet pussy all over your beautiful, beautiful face while you make me come with your mouth?"  
  
JJ nodded complacently, the doubt in her eyes momentarily replaced by a gleaming, wanton yearning.  
  
Emily straddled JJ's face, at first gyrating in the air directly above her: enough space for her to inhale the tart smell of desire but too much space for her to reach out with her tongue and taste it directly. But after less than thirty seconds, Emily couldn't take it anymore and slowly lowered her body onto JJ's face, exhilarated by the feeling of her hot tongue, the cool air of her nostrils exhaling rapidly against her body. Oh, if only Emily could take her time ... If only she didn't _need_ it so fucking badly ... But, as much as her mind cautioned her to slow down, she couldn't prevent her body from writhing wildly against JJ's tongue, her mouth, her nose ... Less than a minute passed before she felt that familiar rise of an impending orgasm and began to shudder, riding out the sensation as her clit throbbed and throbbed and throbbed again and she bit down on her hand to prevent herself from screaming from the incredible, exquisite feeling of knowing that it was JJ underneath her, JJ's tongue pressed hard against her, JJ's lips sucking her, JJ's mouth _wanting_ her ...  
  
"Oh my God," Emily finally groaned, collapsing on the bed next to JJ. "That was amazing." She looked up into JJ's unreadable eyes and added emphatically, _"You_ are amazing. I love you so much."  
  
"I ... I love you, too," JJ responded quietly.  
  
And in that moment, Emily hated this assignment more than anything, hated not being able to know whether JJ's words were her own or that of the character they'd so meticulously developed for her. Because although Emily knew that this fluid barrier between reality and fiction could be her downfall - or, worse, that it could be _their_ downfall - what other choice did she have at this point? She'd loved JJ from afar for so long now that finally being able to verbalize her true feelings came naturally to her. Even if she had to say them to "Alexandra" instead of to JJ.  
  
And even if it was only "Alexandra" and not JJ who felt the same way.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where does the line between pretending and reality begin?

"So, baby," Emily said casually, reaching over to stroke JJ's long blonde hair as she focused on the dark highway in front of them, "I was thinking I might write a book."  
  
JJ snorted. "You've been saying that ever since we met and all you do is type on your stupid laptop for hours, editing other people's books, with absolutely nothing of your own to show for it."  
  
"Not nothing," Emily replied defensively. "I write."  
  
"Oh, yeah? What do you write?"  
  
"Well ..." She hesitated. "I write erotic fiction for websites under a pseudonym. I don't get paid for it, but they're - OK, do you remember _Fifty Shades of Grey?"_  
  
"You know I read about ten pages of that trash before throwing it away." JJ rolled her eyes.  
  
"But did you know it started as fanfiction about the _Twilight_ book series?"  
  
"As .. what?" JJ asked in disbelief. "You mean ..."  
  
"Yep, darling. It started as a little, innocent story about Bella and Edward's ... how shall I say it ... _proclivities_ for BDSM and became a best-seller a hundred times over," Emily responded triumphantly, reaching behind her head to pull her black hair into a loose ponytail. "I write for those sites. You have no idea how many followers I have, how many reviews my stories get! Personally, I'd choose that over cash any day of the week."  
  
"So you write about the _Twilight_ characters having ..."  
  
"Oh, no!" Emily interrupted her, relishing the wide-eyed look of incredulity on JJ's face. Relishing the knowledge that, at some point, JJ would log onto those sites to find the fanfiction she'd been secretly writing for years after Garcia had excitedly introduced her to the concept one day at work. "I write about _Law and Order: Special Victims Unit._ About the soft yet tough ADA Alexandra Cabot being seduced by the secretive, irresistible Olivia Benson."  
  
"It sounds ... it sounds like us," JJ stammered, keeping her eyes fixed in front of her.  
  
"That's why I started writing it," Emily cooed, forcing herself to suppress any unnecessary side remarks about profiling. "I wanted to express all of my fantasies ... um, and all of our experiences, of course ... on paper so I could return to them again and again when you worked those agonizingly-late nights."  
  
"So which is your favorite? I mean, your favorite one you've written about us?" JJ wanted to know, her voice a throaty whisper.  
  
"Probably ..." Emily paused, mentally reviewing the numerous fantasies she'd written about them using the two television characters as a barely-concealed disguise. "Probably the time it was my birthday and I said I wanted to skip my normal tiramisu and have you for dessert instead. When I covered you in melted chocolate, whipped cream, and strawberries and took about an hour licking it all off of you. Remember? You kept begging me to skip the rest of your body and you were trembling so much the strawberry on your pussy kept falling down onto the carpet."  
  
"And then when you finally got there ..." JJ prompted her, shivering slightly.  
  
"First I took the strawberry in my mouth and rubbed it against you. Slowly. You pushed my head against you so hard I almost choked on it!" Emily laughed. "After that, I ate the strawberry ... and then I ate the very best part of my dessert."  
  
JJ shivered again, goosebumps visibly appearing on her skin, and Emily asked innocently, "Alexandra, are you cold?"  
  
"No." JJ swallowed hard. "I'm too ... I'm too hot, actually."  
  
Emily leaned back in her seat and put her hand on JJ's leg. "We're almost there, sweetheart. We'll be there in about half an hour, according to these directions. I know you can wait. Think about how much more amazing it will be if you wait."  
  
After a short period of silence, JJ eventually spoke, briefly glancing over at Emily. "Do you want to know what my favorite memory is?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
"The first night we were together," JJ whispered, her knuckles tightening against the steering wheel. "When you invited me over to your apartment, and I asked you, _Ms. Cook, what does it feel like with a woman?_ and we started kissing. It was like those kisses ignited some flame deep within me, like you'd started a forest fire that I knew I'd never be able to contain from that moment afterward. I was so scared - I had no idea what to do - but you did everything, at first. It was only when I heard you touching yourself next to me that I began to wish it was my finger instead of yours. So I leaned over and I ... and I was so nervous about not doing it right ..."  
  
"But you did it perfectly," Emily reassured her, leaning over to gently kiss her cheek.  
  
"And I woke up early the next morning, torn between putting all of my clothes back on, running away, and pretending like nothing had happened, and between wanting to taste you like you'd tasted me the night before."  
  
Emily could hear the change in her voice instantly; it was no longer the business-like affect of Alexandra Brewster but the uncertain and still somewhat-ashamed JJ speaking.  
  
"I tasted you, thinking I wouldn't like it. But I liked it ... I liked it so much that I ... that I ..."  
  
"That you kept going until I woke up and had an orgasm," Emily broke in.  
  
"Yeah," JJ added wistfully, lost in the memory. "And that's when I knew that nothing would be the same between us ever again."  
  
Emily frowned, uneasiness running through her veins at a rapid pace. _Why did she say that nothing would be the same_ between us _ever again? Why didn't she say that nothing would be the same_ for her _ever again?_ she wondered, furrowing her brow anxiously. _If not for this assignment ... would that night in the hotel room truly have been the first and last night we spent together? If not for this assignment, would she have actually forced herself to forget those feelings, to extinguish that "fire" she spoke about earlier, and return to her unhappy life as a wife and mother as though it had never happened at all? Is that what she's determined to do once this case is closed and we return to Quantico as Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau?_  
  
JJ's voice broke into her thoughts. "That's when I knew I had to be with you, no matter what."  
  
Those words should have come as a relief to Emily, but they didn't. Because JJ's tone had changed: she'd once again transformed herself into Alexandra. Different voice, different posture ... different person?  
  
 _You can't fake who you are while you're having an orgasm,_ Emily thought, trying to suppress the panic rising in her chest, _and I never enjoyed sleeping with Ian Doyle, not once. I certainly never had an orgasm with him. But if that's the only part that JJ's not faking, then how do I make her fall in love with me? How do I make her fall in love with the real me and not with this persona I've created? All of the orgasms in the world won't accomplish that._ She knew that this was her last chance. Her last chance to break cover and tell JJ how she truly felt.  
  
Emily took a deep breath and hesitantly murmured, "JJ?"  
  
At hearing her real name, JJ abruptly sat up straight, her blonde hair whipping across her face as she turned to stare at Emily, hissing, "What are you doing? We left 'Emily' and 'JJ' by the side of the road three states ago, remember?"  
  
"I swear to you, this is the last and only time I'm going to do this," Emily replied quickly, biting her cuticles. "But I need you to know something. I need you to know something really important before it's too late to tell you."  
  
JJ's posture softened. "OK, Emily. I'm listening. What is it?"  
  
"I need you to know that ... that everything I've said to you as 'Vivian Cook' has been the truth. My truth. JJ, I really am in love with you and I'd give anything in the world for this undercover assignment to be real." She exhaled raggedly. "OK. That's it. That's all I wanted you to know."  
  
"I ... I don't know what to say," JJ stammered, visibly uncomfortable. "I'm not sure how to respond to that."  
  
Emily turned her head toward the window so JJ couldn't see the tears shining in her eyes. "Then don't say anything," she managed to choke out.  
  
"Oh, Emily. Oh, god ... I'm so sorry, but ..."  
  
"No," Emily stated firmly, wiping the teardrops from her cheeks. "Don't be sorry. I'm the one who's sorry. I never should have thought that this was anything more than just another assignment to you. I never should have hoped it might be."  
  
"Emily, I -"  
  
"We're almost there, Alexandra," she practically spat out. "So let's just listen to some music and enjoy the rest of the ride."  
  
When JJ tried to take Emily's hand in her own - a gesture of comfort, of friendship - Emily harshly pushed it away, sending JJ's hand flying into the compartment box in front of her.  
  
"Ouch!" JJ cried out, rubbing her knuckles against her jeans. "That hurt!"  
  
Despite herself, Emily couldn't stop the anguished words from bubbling up in her throat and leaving her glossy pink lips.  
  
"You're right, JJ. That did hurt. That hurt more than you'll ever, ever know."  
  
Fifteen minutes later, following a long period of silence so loud it was deafening, they pulled into the driveway of the beautiful two-story house they'd be calling home for the next few weeks.  
  
"Well, we've arrived, Alexandra," Emily announced, unable to hide the traces of bitterness in her voice. "Our dreams have finally come true."  
  
She didn't wait for a response, just looked underneath the doormat, finding two sets of keys, and unlocked the front door, collapsing on the couch in the living room with her eyes closed. Waiting. Not waiting for JJ, but for this feeling to go away. Praying that it would go away. And yet knowing, deep down, that it wouldn't. Knowing that the best she could do was merely to pretend that her heart hadn't just been torn out of her chest and shattered into a thousand pieces. And, worst of all, knowing that she'd have to express her love - Vivian's love - to someone who was just faking it. Just doing her job.  
  
Behind her, Emily heard the door close and lock before JJ sat down next to her on the couch. "Vivian? Hey, Vivian?"  
  
Emily opened her eyes, prepared to feign exhaustion and suggest going to sleep, until she saw the expression on JJ's face. The honesty in her eyes.  
  
"I know we fought in the car about whether or not this was what I really wanted," JJ murmured, grabbing Emily's hand and intertwining their fingers. "But I do. I'm just ... I'm just scared. This is all so new to me. Like ... like when I found out you were a lesbian and you touched me and ... um, and when I stopped going to class ... It wasn't because I didn't want you. It was because I did, and that terrified me more than anything. So this ... this terrifies me more than anything."  
  
She leaned forward and kissed Emily with passion, with intensity. "You were always better at adapting to new situations," she continued, brushing her lips briefly against Emily's. "I need you to teach me. Will you do that? Will you teach me how ... how to be brave like you?"  
  
Emily sat up and cupped JJ's face in her palms, gazing up with adoration underneath her long, dark eyelashes. "I'll teach you," she promised. "I'll teach you everything you want to know."  
  
There was no resistance, no hesitation, when Emily pressed her lips against JJ's, their hot tongues meeting lightly and briefly before JJ herself deepened the kiss, her tongue exploring the inside of Emily's mouth with a newfound desperation, an urgency that she'd never exhibited so wantonly before.  
  
"Let's go upstairs," she panted, "and really make this place our own."  
  
Emily smiled to herself and took JJ's hand in her own, trailing behind as JJ hurried to the bedroom, forcing Emily to skip some of the plush carpet steps just to keep up, and began haphazardly disrobing.  
  
And then she said it.  
  
JJ actually said it.  
  
"After our first night together, I knew I'd never be the same again. I just never imagined it would be this good, that I'd want you this much. I never imagined that I'd ... that I'd love you this much."  
  
Emily stepped forward and held JJ in a tight, fierce embrace, running her hands down her lover's bare back and kissing her shoulder to obscure the tears of joy brimming in her eyes.  
  
She never could have known that, by turning her head away to hide her own emotions, she'd missed one crucial clue about JJ's:  
  
The conflicted reluctance on her face.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and JJ spend some quality time in the bedroom, where true feelings are revealed.

Naked. And kissing. And touching. And rubbing. Beads of sweat dripping down both of their bodies, their fingers roaming everywhere while they kept grinding frantically against each other, moaning and whimpering at the direct contact, at their own wetness and warmth combining as though their bodies had joined, fused, become one.  
  
"Fingers," JJ panted. "Put your fingers inside of me."  
  
"Oh god ... Oh baby ... Do you want to come all over me?" Emily groaned.  
  
JJ nodded and reached down, surprising Emily by easily gliding her own two fingers inside. "Mmmnnnhhh ..." was the only sound Emily could utter, as JJ intuitively found that ideal spot and began to stroke it gently while Emily did the same to her.  
  
They stared into one another's eyes, their fingers moving rhythmically, simultaneously. Curling forward and tapping against the striated area inside while their gazes remained locked, their excitement enhanced by the occasional arched back, the spontaneous grunt of pleasure, the slippery wetness trickling out onto the bedsheets. And, most of all, by the animalistic need reflected on their faces.  
  
Emily slipped a third finger into JJ, watching with satisfaction as her blue eyes widened in surprise and she cried out, "I'm coming!" followed by a gush of warm fluid and a sudden curling pressure of fingertips that prompted Emily's own orgasm, a tidal wave flowing out of her and onto JJ's hand, her arm, her pussy, as Emily howled in ecstasy - not caring if the neighbors could hear her, if Reid could hear her - hell, not caring if the whole BAU team had magically converged in the room and was watching them. It felt _that_ good. It felt like nothing she'd ever experienced before, not with anyone.  
  
After Emily collapsed onto the pillow next to JJ, she leaned across that toned, perfect body and interlocked their sticky fingers, squeezing JJ's hand in a gesture of security, waiting until her breathing had sufficiently normalized and she could manage speech again. "I've never come so hard in my life," she panted, her heart still racing and her head still fuzzy from the aftershocks.  
  
"I've never felt so ... so close to anyone in my life," JJ responded in a low tone, turning her head toward Emily and permitting her to see the tears brimming in her eyes. "You were right about how it's so much more ... more emotional this way. It almost doesn't even feel like sex. It feels more like ... like ... Well, it feels more like ..."  
  
"Like love," Emily offered, continuing where JJ's voice had faltered.  
  
"Sometimes, back at the BAU," JJ began to confide, until Emily abruptly jolted up from the pillow and shook her head "no," fighting against the deep longing to hear the rest of that sentence, to know what exactly JJ had felt toward her before this assignment, to listen to every detail of the attraction JJ had alluded to back in that hotel bathroom only days earlier. Days that now felt like a lifetime ago.  
  
"I mean," JJ coughed, correcting herself. "Sometimes, back at NYU, before I knew you were a lesbian, I used to fantasize about what it would be like if we had ..." She paused. "This is going to sound so stupid."  
  
"No, keep going," Emily encouraged her, trying to prevent the desperate desire to hear JJ's real life fantasies from creeping into her voice.  
  
"If we had to share a room or something ... I don't know, maybe for a trip?" JJ offered lamely.  
  
 _Or for a case,_ Emily thought, privately smiling to herself.  
  
"And we were on this ... this trip, watching a movie. A movie where two girls were ... together. So I'd have an excuse. An excuse to ask you if you'd ever done anything like that before."  
  
Suddenly, Emily remembered all of the films she'd refused to watch with JJ for the very reason that they contained lesbian themes, wishing she could go back in time and change her lame excuses about how this movie sounded boring or how she'd already seen that movie, for the sole reason that she knew she couldn't sit next to JJ and watch two women on screen without becoming unbearably aroused to the point where she might just be rendered incapable of keeping her secret hidden any longer.  
  
"In my fantasies, you always said no, because ... Well, because I'd seen you flirt with so many guys and I just assumed you were straight. But when I asked if you'd ever wanted to do anything like that, you said yes. So I leaned over and I kissed you." JJ blushed, squirming slightly as she clenched her legs tightly together. "And, um ... We just kissed for a while and you got on top of me and kind of started grinding your knee into me and then you started to touch me and ... and then I saw how turned on you were so I reached down to touch you, too, and ... and that's when I usually came. When I was by myself, I mean."  
  
Emily's profiling instinct kicked in immediately. "You wanted to be my first," she realized.  
  
"I ... I guess so. I mean, you always remember your first, right?" JJ mumbled, turning her head away in embarrassment.  
  
"But J ... But Alexandra," Emily quickly corrected herself, "even if you always remember your first, it's your _last_ that you cherish the most."  
  
"How do you know?" JJ challenged her. "How do you know, if every person you've been with since your first was supposed to be your last? If they've just become this ... this blended collage of women you've loved over the years?"  
  
"I know it," Emily said in a steady voice, "because I know you're going to be my last."  
  
JJ opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Sparing her the effort of trying to articulate her true feelings when they had already committed themselves to fully becoming Alexandra Brewster and Vivian Cook, Emily kissed her. Sweetly. Tenderly.  
  
Only moments later, JJ was kissing her back with intensity, sucking on her tongue and lower lip, leaving Emily whimpering in response. "Let's pretend," JJ murmured into her ear. "Let's pretend it's our first time ever. With anyone."  
  
Emily nodded and then returned to JJ's mouth, their tongues meeting briefly. Emily ran her hands through JJ's long blonde hair, stroking the sides of her face. "Your breasts," she said, trying to sound shy. "Can I touch them?"  
  
JJ nodded and Emily sat back on her knees, hesitantly drawing circles around JJ's breasts with her fingers before cupping them in her hands and running her thumbs over the pink, pointed nipples stiffening under her touch. "Ohhhh!" JJ cried out. "Press yours against mine and kiss me."  
  
So Emily did, moving up and down against JJ's body and kissing her mouth. She slid her knee in between JJ's legs and froze, pretending it was accidental. "Can I ... I mean, should I ..."  
  
"Yes," JJ responded instantly, spreading her legs slightly and raising her torso to match the gyrations of Emily's knee, hesitantly shifting her own upward and grinding it between Emily's legs. They continued kissing, their bodies moving together, for what seemed like a blissful eternity. "Do you want to ..." JJ paused, biting her lip. "Do you want to touch me? Like you touch yourself when you're alone?"  
  
"Will you touch me, too?" Emily asked tentatively, trying to sound like the first-timer of JJ's fantasies. "So we know ... so we know how to do it to each other?"  
  
JJ inhaled sharply, spreading her legs. Within seconds, her finger was on Emily's clit, drawing slow circles around the hood. When Emily reached down to do the same, she matched JJ's strokes perfectly, but with increased speed and pressure. JJ followed in turn, and less than a minute passed before their open mouths were gasping against one another, all focus and concentration on the all-encompassing feeling between their legs, the tempo increasing and rising and rising until they were both coming and moaning and trembling as their bodies soared into orgasm upon orgasm, until their wrists were aching from the effort, until the sensation was too much and JJ pulled her hand away, grasping Emily's in her own.  
  
Instead of rolling over to the other side of the bed, Emily remained on top of JJ, planting small, sweet kisses on her neck and her cheeks until JJ reached out to hold her face and kissed her mouth hungrily, with renewed intensity, before her head fell back on the pillow below. Her blue eyes were searching Emily's ... for what?  
  
"Even though you're my last," Emily whispered, "there are so many ways in which you've also been my first."  
  
JJ's mouth widened into a smile, apparently satisfied with her disclosure. "I love you," she said, almost to herself, before raising her eyes to meet Emily's and firmly declaring, "I love you."  
  
"I love you, too," Emily answered, stroking JJ's upper arm with the palm of her hand. "And as much as I wish I could ravish your beautiful body all night long, we'd really better get some sleep now. We've got a long day ahead of us checking out the town and meeting the locals."  
  
JJ nodded complicity. "Just ... promise me something?" she asked in a small voice.  
  
"Anything."  
  
"Tonight ... Can you just promise to hold me and not let go?" Emily smiled and leaned over to turn off the light, snuggling into JJ and easing her onto her side so she could place her arms around her.  
  
"I can't just promise that I'll do it tonight," Emily softly remarked into her back, prompting JJ to glance over her shoulder in alarm. Emily kissed her shoulder before uttering the words she planned to live by, words that might require more than she ever bargained for, words that she was willing to fight for, no matter what obstacles she had to overcome, to make them a reality.  
  
"I promise that I'll hold you every single night for the rest of our lives, if you'll let me."  
  
And just as she was about to fall asleep, Emily heard JJ quietly mouthing the words that made her heart soar with happiness:  
  
"I'll let you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and JJ learn some new information about the protocols involved in their undercover operation and prepare to introduce themselves to the community.

When the shrieking alarm began to beep at 8:00 am, Emily reached over JJ's body to slam it with her fist, groaning, "It's too early ... Let's just stay in bed for a little while longer."  
  
JJ curled her body toward Emily, kissing her softly on the lips. "I'd love to, baby, but we can't. We're meeting with that gardener at 9 and then we've got to head into town to pick up some stuff for the house. Come on. We can have a nice lunch in town and introduce ourselves to some of our neighbors. Everyone here is supposed to be very friendly. Not like in New York, where we barely even spoke to the people down the hall in all the years we lived there."  
  
"Mmmnnnummph," Emily responded, grabbing the covers and pulling them over her face. "Fine. But you take the first shower."  
  
"Deal."  
  
Fifteen minutes later, JJ opened the blinds and tore the covers off of an ardently-protesting Emily. "I don't want to hear it, babe. It's your turn."  
  
All the cross-country driving and the undercover drama and the sexual acrobatics of the previous evening had left Emily feeling surprisingly sore. _You're an FBI agent,_ she told herself sternly. _Now get it together before you need to do some physical re-training._  
  
After showering, dressing, and putting on makeup, Emily made her way downstairs and immediately smelled the delicious aroma of espresso brewing in the kitchen. "A cup for you," JJ offered, smirking slightly at the elated expression on her face. "A little nonfat milk and three Splenda, just how you like it."  
  
"Did I ever tell you you're the best?" Emily commented, gratefully accepting the azure blue coffee cup from her hands and kissing her on the cheek.  
  
"Yeah," JJ replied teasingly, flipping her blonde hair behind her shoulders, "but it never hurts to hear it again."  
  
"Well, then, you're the best," Emily repeated, gulping the slightly-bitter caffeinated beverage until there was nothing left.  
  
"Another?" JJ inquired and Emily nodded her head yes just as she heard the doorbell ring.  
  
"That must be the gardening guy," Emily said, turning toward the doorway. "I'll get it." She walked hesitantly toward the door, sharply inhaling before glancing through the peep-hole and seeing Spencer standing there, looking uncomfortable and anxious as he shuffled his Converse sneakers against the doormat outside. _This is your first test,_ Emily reminded herself. _Do not fuck it up._  
  
"Hello! You must be Spencer!" she exclaimed, in a voice nothing like her own. "Why don't you come on inside? We've got some espresso brewing if you'd like a cup."  
  
Spencer shifted his hazel eyes and nodded, entering the living room.  
  
"How do you take it?" Emily asked.  
  
"How do I take what?" he echoed, visibly confused.  
  
"Your coffee," she responded through gritted teeth, reminding him that this was supposed to be their first meeting. "How do you take it?"  
  
"Oh! Um, black ... with lots of sugar. Um, maybe I should do it?"  
  
"No, no, you're a guest here!" Emily patted his arm reassuringly before calling into the kitchen. "Alexandra, can you bring out another cup for Spencer here? He says he likes it black with a lot of sugar."  
  
"Sure thing, honey," JJ called back.  
  
"So. Spencer. I'm Vivian, and back there, brewing up that delicious espresso, is my partner Alexandra. We saw your advertisement and we could really use your help. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself?"  
  
When JJ came in with the two cups of espresso, she smiled sweetly and introduced herself before placing the cup in Spencer's trembling hands.  
  
"Um, well ... I live next door. I'm working as a part-time caretaker for a woman who has some ... healthcare issues."  
  
"But doesn't that take up all of your time?" JJ inquired curiously.  
  
"No, she's ... she's an elderly woman with bipolar disorder. I just have to make sure that she takes her medication and sometimes we go on walks together or she'll have me read the newspaper to her ... but it gives me a lot of free time, and I'm trying to save money for college," he explained. "When I was 18, I had a full scholarship to Ole Miss, but my mom got sick with cancer and I decided to take care of her instead of going. She died last year. Since my scholarship expired, I decided to move here for the in-state tuition assistance and raise enough money to start paying off the loans I'm going to have to take out."  
  
"That's smart of you," JJ mused.  
  
"Oh, this one here used to be a financial planner back in Manhattan," Emily bragged, squeezing JJ's hand. "Any advice you need, you just ask her."  
  
"Th-thanks," Spencer stammered. "And since Ms. Winters has lived in this town the longest, if there's any information you want about what it's like to live here, you can ask me and if I don't already know, I'll find out from her."  
  
"Like ... information about all those murders we've been hearing about?" Emily asked boldly, sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest.  
  
"Vivian!" JJ hissed. "Did you have to?"  
  
"Yes, I have to! We finalized a deal on this house before discovering that there might be a ... a ..." She forced a shudder. "A serial killer on the loose?"  
  
"All I can say is to take safety precautions," Spencer replied carefully. "But coming from New York City, you're probably already used to doing that. The people here are more trusting, almost naively so. That's why I dug a firewall tunnel around my area of the house around back - and I should probably tell you that for it to work, I had to expand it into your backyard and kitchen, too."  
  
"Why would you need a firewall?" JJ asked suspiciously. "I mean, _you_ could be the serial killer, for all we know."  
  
"I, um, I have a girlfriend? Back in California? And sometimes we like to ..." He coughed, blushing, as Emily and JJ exchanged amused glances. "Sometimes we like to send text messages that aren't exactly G-rated. And since this whole town operates under the same IP address and anyone can easily hack into it, I wanted some privacy."  
  
"How does it work?" Emily inquired, certain that he was telling them about this for a reason.  
  
"Well, if you're in the kitchen or the backyard and you send a text message, anyone trying to hack into your messages will just see a bunch of characters that don't make sense. But the person receiving it will see the text you meant to send."  
  
Emily nodded. This was truly a brilliant move, probably orchestrated by Garcia to divert suspicion about the nonsense text messages they were supposed to send every night. If the unsub hacked their phones, she'd assume that they were in the kitchen or the backyard under the protection of the firewall. Ingenious.  
  
"But will you be able to see our messages?" JJ asked, looking concerned. "I mean, you're a twenty-something male living next door to a lesbian couple. How do we know you haven't taken further liberties with our property so you can ... I don't know, peek into our bedroom at night?"  
  
"Alexandra!" Emily admonished her, an apology forming on her lips before Spencer interrupted.  
  
"No, no - it's OK. But you need to worry more about all those kids running around with infrared binoculars and miniature video cameras than you do about me. In fact, Ms. Winters was positive she saw a suspicious-looking red truck outside of your home the day before you arrived and became hysterical, babbling about the truck and secret video cameras. She was so upset I had to administer an injection of lorazepam to calm her down."  
  
"So ... there could be cameras here now?" Emily said in a low voice, an uneasy shiver running through her.  
  
"If Ms. Winters is right - and please keep in mind she has a long history of delusions - it is possible," Spencer answered, tucking his golden hair behind his ears. "But, according to her, you'll never find them. Or even if you do find them, there will be multiple types in multiple rooms, smaller than a tack."  
  
JJ's eyes watered with genuine tears. "I don't want some pervert watching us every night!" she sobbed. "Forget the down payment. Let's just go home. Let's go back to New York now."  
  
Emily laid a steady hand on her arm. "Alexandra. Baby. Calm down. We've been here for one night. If some kid gets off by watching us, then how is it any different than the Peeping Tom we didn't even know about, until the cops knocked on our door with all that video footage? At least now we're aware of it and can put on a show for that little perv. Or we can always do it in the car." She leaned in to kiss JJ who, to her surprise, kissed her back. If not for Spencer clearing his throat awkwardly, they might have forgotten that he was even there.  
  
Glancing at him, Emily couldn't wait to describe to the rest of the team how his face turned bright red, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead, with his leg jiggling up and down at an unprecedented speed upon seeing them kiss.  
  
"Anyway," Emily added dismissively, "this is coming from a woman with some serious psychiatric issues. Maybe she imagined the whole thing."  
  
"You're right," JJ said, straightening her back. "But if we find even one camera, I am calling every single one of my legal contacts to go after him on warantless wiretapping charges."  
  
"She's so protective," Emily cooed, stroking JJ's arm. "You'd never know it, but there's an absolute tigress hidden underneath that blonde hair and those blue eyes."  
  
"I ... I can see that," Spencer choked out.  
  
"So when can you start and how often do you think we'll need maintenance?" Emily asked, turning her body toward him.  
  
"I'd say twice a week. How's ... Wednesday and Saturday around noon?"  
  
Perfect. The two days following their mandated "date nights" at the lesbian-friendly bar and the independent cinema.  
  
"And how much do you charge?" Emily wanted to know.  
  
"Thirty dollars for maintenance, fifty if you want me to do any decorative planting. Trust me, it's the lowest rate in town by far - and I'm right next door, so if you ever have a problem, I'll take care of it for free."  
  
"Sounds great!" Emily mustered up some enthusiasm in her voice. "We'll see you on Saturday, then."  
  
"Oh, I'm sure you'll see me around town before that," he responded. "But I'll be here and ready to work on Saturday. Since this place was cleaned up before you moved in, I don't think you'll need me in the next two days, but if you do, here's my phone number." He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a miniature notebook, quickly scrawling down his name and number along with a message. "And that's my e-mail."  
  
He folded the paper and handed it to Emily, who put it in her pocket. "Let me see you out," she said smoothly, showing him to the door and shaking his hand. "It was very nice meeting you."  
  
"Likewise," he replied, ducking his head slightly as he headed back toward the house next door.  
  
"I'm going to take a look at the garden and think about any additional plants we might want for decoration," Emily told JJ after closing the door.  
  
She surveyed the property and pulled out Spencer's note. It contained a new number - probably a throwaway cell phone like the one's they'd been issued - and committed it to memory. Then her eyes scrolled down and a chill went through her as she saw what he'd written when he claimed to be giving them his e-mail address.  
  
It read: _Be careful. We think she's already watching you._


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and JJ check out the town and discover that the locals know more than they were led to believe.

"Hey, babe?" Emily said casually, closing the back door behind her and reaching toward the kitchen counter to save the memorized digits in her BAU-issued throwaway phone. "Put this number in your cell."

When she handed the piece of paper to JJ, her eyes widened in fear before she quickly blinked it away, swallowed hard, and uttered a simple "OK," typing the number into her contacts list.

"Are you done with the espresso?" Emily wanted to know, taking the note away from JJ - who seemed unable to tear her concerned blue eyes away from the message at the bottom - and placing it back into her pocket so she could dispose of it. "Since you were so thoughtful in making it, I'm going to clean up and then we should check out the town."

JJ nodded, still apparently dazed by what she had seen. Emily remembered that feeling all-too-well from her first undercover assignment. The feeling of clarity that suddenly hits you when you're forced to acknowledge that this isn't just some innocent role-playing game, but a governmental mission requiring you to be two people at once. Requiring you to perfect an invented persona that demands your complete and realistic transformation, while also requiring you to hold onto your true self in a deep, hidden part of your brain that no one else can reach - and, realizing that if you fail, you risk not only your own safety but the safety of countless others relying on you to seamlessly pull off this act of duplicity.

Which was why, Emily finally admitted to herself, she and JJ never should have taken this assignment in the first place. Why she should have spoken to Hotch privately and asked for a different undercover partner, perhaps from another unit. Why the only reason she didn't at the time was because she was blinded by love - so blinded, in fact, that she'd managed to put the object of that love into a grievously-dangerous situation - and, until this very moment, hadn't even been able to consider the realistic possibility that her own feelings had clouded her judgment from the very beginning and would continue to cloud her judgment as the case moved forward.

"Go upstairs and put some shoes on," Emily said gently, meeting JJ's eyes under her dark lashes. "And bring mine down, too. The black boots. I'll clean up. OK, honey?"

JJ nodded her assent numbly and headed out of the kitchen, toward the staircase.

Think like a profiler,

Emily mentally ordered herself, turning the knobs on the sink to wash away the residue from the espresso filter. _A profiler would never send a note to a potential victim if that note could place them in danger. Think, Emily, think. How would Spencer expect me to get rid of something as permanent as ink?_

And then it hit her. The ink wasn't permanent. It couldn't be, or Spencer never would have risked giving it to her in the first place. So she took the folded paper out of her pocket and, frowning, double-checked the digits in her cell phone. Praying she'd been right, she pretended to drop the note in the soapy water. "Oh shit!" she groaned, for the benefit of anyone who might be watching her - but when she saw the ink completely disappear, leaving absolutely no residue to indicate that anything had ever been written on it, she mentally gave herself a triumphant high-five. The ink didn't just bleed away: it was gone.

Emily felt JJ's presence behind her just as she heard her uneasy voice. "What happened?"

"I dropped the phone number and e-mail in the sink," Emily responded, feigning chagrin. "Good thing we managed to write those numbers down first, huh? 'Cause this paper is a mess."

JJ peered over her shoulder and saw the blank paper, visibly fighting a relieved smile. "You always were a klutz," she admonished.

"I know, I know," Emily sighed, rolling her eyes and lifting the soggy paper out of the espresso filter, shredding it in mock frustration as an extra precaution before dumping it in the trash. "So are you ready to hit the town?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," JJ replied with a grimace.

Emily leaned in and kissed her. Hard. Trying to communicate with her lips all the revelations she'd never be able to admit out loud. Not until this assignment was over, at least ... or maybe not ever. After all, how would _she_ have reacted if someone had knowingly placed her life in danger out of a selfish, manipulative desire to win her love? Any rational person would claim that if Emily truly loved her, she would have done everything in her power to keep JJ far away from this case. And any BAU member who discovered just how irrationally she'd been blinded by her love for JJ would do everything in _their_ power to keep her far away from any and all cases in the future.

"You really know how to make a girl want to stall ..." JJ murmured, glancing upstairs at the bedroom.

"Later, baby. I promise. But for now? Just a walk around town to check out the stores and meet some people. Sound good?"

JJ nodded hesitantly, shooting one last mournful look at the sanctuary of their bedroom atop the stairs before handing over the keys. "You drive."

The town itself was like any small town, save for the LGBT flags hanging outside of a local bookstore and the lesbian-friendly bar and cafe they'd been told about. In need of some reading, Emily suggested starting with the bookstore.

The two attractive guys behind the counter were openly flirting with one another, ignoring Emily's presence until she interrupted sweetly, "My partner and I are new in town, looking for a few books. Lesbian fiction - and not the gratuitous kind - but fiction with actual plots. We're also looking for a book on lesbian erotica. Do you have any of those?"

"Oh, sweetie," he replied. "It's too bad for all those gorgeous straight guys in this town that you're a dyke. And your partner! My gay-dar definitely did _not_ go off on that one. Anyway, I'm Michael, and this is Tim. We've lost a lot of customers to the Barnes & Noble in the next town, but we are _the_ place to be if Sapphic literature is your style. Come on, I'll show you some books."

Emily had read most of the fictional novels years ago, when she was still in the process of self-discovery: recalling in detail the plots involving unexpected lesbian love affairs that bloomed out of an initial, forbidden attraction, but she added them to her purchase list regardless, hoping that JJ would read them and see that her feelings about Emily could be more than a mere anomaly, that their relationship could be more than just a transient lustful tryst. Momentarily lost in her thoughts, in her memories of shamefully touching herself underneath the covers after pulling out those well-hidden books as she imagined herself doing all the things so vividly described on the printed page, it took a few minutes before she noticed JJ biting her lip as she flipped through a book entitled _A Guide to Lesbian Sex (2012 Edition)._

Emily quietly made her way toward JJ, peering over her shoulder as she stared, transfixed, at the images and text in chapters such as "Tribbing 101" and "Orgasm Denial: The Best Orgasm You'll Ever Have?" This was certainly not a book that had been on the shelves during Emily's coming-out days, and she couldn't help herself from shifting the four novels she'd chosen onto her right hip and gently reaching out to touch JJ's shoulder with her left hand, her thumb stroking the soft cotton of JJ's white button-down shirt.

JJ jumped and turned around suddenly, stammering, "I - I was just ..."

"Let's get it." Emily murmured, leaning forward to whisper in her ear, "I'm always willing to try something new, if it excites you." She grabbed the book from JJ's trembling hands and brought the stack up to the front, JJ trailing behind.

"So girls, you do know about Ladies Night at Kitty Corner, right?" Michael asked as he rang up their purchases. "Totally safe space to meet other couples in the area and a terrific mix of straight, gay, lesbian ..."

"You should tell them, Michael," Tim interrupted in a serious voice, looking up from his book-keeping. "They just moved here and you have a responsibility to tell them."

"Tell us what?" Emily asked innocently, collecting her change and reaching for the plastic bag on the counter.

Michael sighed, his green eyes flickering between Emily and JJ as, in a hushed voice, he disclosed, "I'm sure you've heard about the murders, right?"

"Oh, yeah," Emily responded, waving her hand dismissively. "But we're from New York City. Whoever he is, we can handle him."

"That's the thing," Michael said worriedly. "Rumor has it that the killer isn't a guy. It's a woman. And despite what the papers claim, the locals all know that they're more than just random home-invasion killings."

"You mean, the surveillance stuff?" JJ questioned, keeping her tone neutral. "It's OK. We already know about that."

"But what you might _not_ know is that the only people who have been killed were lesbians. All couples. Usually new to the area by a matter of weeks or months. Because this state doesn't recognize gay marriage, the reporters made it seem like it was just a strange coincidence that two women were living in the house. They emphasized the owner of the property and wrote her partner off as a friend who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Us locals know better. And every time we've tried to write to the paper to get that detail published, we've been threatened with trying to 'incite homosexual panic'. This is not New York City, girlfriend. So while your presence here is tolerated -"

"Even if ours isn't," Tim grumbled.

Michael shot him a look. "Well, we have to deal with vandalism and graffiti and church flyers with our pictures on them, warning parents to 'keep their kids safe' from us, _you_ have to worry about a serial killer that the local police won't admit is probably a woman and probably exacting a different, much more deadly kind of vengeance. So you two be careful, OK?"

"How do you know all of this?" Emily asked, surprised at how detailed - and how close to the BAU's profile - his information was. Hotch had made it clear that the papers and the police department had squelched all speculation about the presumed gender of the killer.

"It's a small town, and every new lesbian couple finds their way into this bookstore at some point. There's no way a straight guy would do this, unless it was a threesome gone wrong. And there's no way any of our friends would ever be involved in something so heinous. It has to be a woman. We've even been pretending that the cash machine is broken when a woman comes in here alone so we can take down her credit card information. All of those names have been turned over to the police but no arrests have been made, so I guess ..." His voice trailed off.

"She's smart enough to stay away from this place," Emily mused, her mind spinning. _Had this local knowledge impeded the FBI's investigation?_ she wondered. _Or had it just made their unsub a more careful - more deadly - murderer?_ She shuddered involuntarily, already knowing the answer. When an entire town is closely watching, there could be only two outcomes: either the killer is caught and apprehended based on a mistake they'd made or the killer becomes even more skilled at evading detection and accelerates with confidence. Paradoxically, it turns out to be that very confidence that often results in the first outcome, but only immediately after the unsub has committed another crime or is unexpectedly caught in the act. Emily shuddered again, wondering if she was mistaken when she trusted her team to place her and JJ in such a dangerous situation. To essentially use them as bait. Wondering if, when the killer targeted them - and the killer _would_ target them - they could trust the rest of their team to save them before it was too late.

"See, now you've scared her!" Tim admonished, circling around the counter to embrace Emily in a hug. "Listen, sweetheart. We've all got your back. Ever since the housing market recovered and this place became a little-known gay Mecca, the ratio of murders to 'happily-ever-afters' is so small that you shouldn't even think about turning around to pay some ridiculous rent for some crappy apartment back in Manhattan. We've seen couples do that before. You'll love it here, I swear. And we're going to keep watching and taking notes and sending information to the cops and even the FBI until this bitch is caught."

"The FBI?" JJ asked uneasily, freezing in place.

"Well, it's a hate crime, isn't it?" Michael interjected. "The FBI should have been here months ago, looking into this. And I don't care what kind of watch list they've put me on, but I'm not going to stop searching for a way to get this place back to the haven it used to be. I have nothing to hide. If anyone should be hiding, it's the FBI. Their lack of interest is a disgrace to the whole community."

"Promise you'll stay at least one week," Tim implored. "I see that look in your eyes ... That same look I saw when other lesbian couples packed their shit and disappeared into the night once we told them what was going on. Just one week. I grew up here and the second I was old enough, I moved away to San Francisco and never thought I'd walk these streets again. I came back ... _We_ came back because this isn't the town I grew up in. I replaced all those hateful memories with so many good ones. Just stay a week and I know you'll love it here as much as we do."

"OK," Emily agreed, forcing a smile. "We'll give it a chance."

"Now I want to see you both at Kitty Corner tomorrow night!" Michael called after them. "Happy Hour starts at five!"

After leaving the bookstore, Emily and JJ exchanged looks. This local knowledge was certainly not part of the profile they'd been given by the team, and the fact that these murders were happening while an entire town was keeping watch rendered the unsub even deadlier than they'd thought.

When they climbed back into the car, JJ was shaking, tears brimming in her deep blue eyes. "I need ... I need to go back to the house and process all of this," she choked out. "Just for a couple of hours. I need to relax ... to take a nap or something and forget about this case for a little while."

"Me, too," Emily declared, reaching over to squeeze JJ's hand.

Of course, with the newfound lesbian sex guide sitting in the plastic bag beside them, Emily had an entirely different plan as to how to get JJ to relax and forget about the case ... and it certainly didn't involve taking a nap.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking away from their undercover characters for a little while can't be THAT bad ... right?

On the ride back from the bookstore, Emily was suddenly struck with a realization as harshly as though she'd been hit by a lightning bolt. "Ms. Parsons," she mused aloud.  
  
"I'm sorry?" JJ asked, visibly confused.  
  
"In the flyer, Spencer - the kid next door - said he was working for a woman named Ms. Parsons. Yet today he called her Ms. Winters. He's been living there for a while; how could he get the name wrong?" Emily shook her head. She knew Spencer. She knew that he hadn't made a mistake. That he had been trying to tell her something important. "Listen, Alexandra, why don't you go upstairs, take a Xanax if you need to, and I'll go next door to talk to him about it while you relax?"  
  
"Sounds good," JJ replied, flashing a grateful smile. It was clear she needed a break. _She's new to this,_ Emily reminded herself, _and she doesn't fully understand that when you're undercover, you aren't supposed to have the luxury of 'taking a break.' Give her time. Don't push her. And, most of all, do not let this case break her like they broke you when you were undercover. Don't you dare let that happen to her. Not to her, not ever to her._  
  
After parking the car and kissing JJ on the cheek, Emily headed next door, knocking tentatively. An elderly woman answered the door. "Hello?" she asked suspiciously.  
  
"Hi there," Emily said, flashing a bright grin at her neighbor. "I'm Vivian Cook. My partner, Alexandra, and I just moved in next door, and -"  
  
"Oh, _you're_ the ones I saw moving in the other night! I believe you've met my renter, Spencer, already. I'm Sarah Parsons."  
  
Parsons. Not Winters. Emily's instinct had been correct.  
  
"Come on in, dear. Would you like some tea? I can get Spencer to fetch it for you." Before Emily could protest, Ms. Parsons was calling toward the back of the house, "Spencer, darling? One of those nice ladies from next door is here."  
  
"Actually, I came here to talk to him," Emily explained apologetically. "An issue with our backyard. Although I would absolutely love to sit and talk with you another time, I'm afraid we might have had some deer grazing on our lawn and I could really use his advice before they tear up the entire garden."  
  
"Oh, of course!" Ms. Parsons exclaimed. "There he is ... Spencer, why don't you let this nice girl - Vivian, was it? - show you the havoc those deer have been wreaking on her yard. If you ask me, the best solution is a rifle and a good aim, but Spencer here won't even let me do a little target practice every now and again."  
  
"There's a good reason for that, Ms. Parsons," Spencer said gently, raising his eyebrows.  
  
"Oh, phooey! That one time I shot Johnny in the leg? He recovered just fine," she insisted vehemently. "Anyway, you run along and see if you can help these city folks with our country problems and when you return, perhaps you could read to me? A little Proust, maybe?"  
  
"Absolutely," Spencer promised, following Emily into her yard.  
  
"Nice trick with the ink," she muttered quietly, her dark eyes darting around her.  
  
"I knew you'd figure it out," he responded in a low voice.  
  
"Ms. Parsons. Not Winters. Tell me the significance," Emily implored, keeping her eyes fixed ahead as though they were discussing the garden.  
  
Spencer tucked his brown hair behind his ears and shifted closer to her so that their shoulders were touching. "Possible unsub. Ashley Winters. Massive orders of sex toys sent to her address. You'll see her ID tomorrow at Kitty Corner."  
  
"Got it," Emily said, adding in a loud voice, "Oh, so that's not from any deer after all? Just an uneven lawnmower before we moved in? Well, that's good. I'd hate to have to chase deer off the property. I was a vegetarian for ten years, you know."  
  
After they parted ways, awkwardly waving good-bye, Emily opened the door and leaned against it, frowning. There had to be more to the profile than just a large delivery of sex toys, right? After all, how many sex toys had _she_ ordered from Babes in Toyland in the past? Emily hated being so close to her team and yet so far away. She wanted so badly to be in that room, brainstorming with them ...  
  
And yet, as her eyes strayed up to the white-carpeted stairs and the half-closed bedroom door, right now she wanted to be in _that_ room with JJ even more.  
  
Quietly, Emily crept up the stairs so as not to awaken JJ if she'd taken a sedative to calm down or if she was merely resting and trying to process the experience of being undercover.  
  
And that's when she heard the sounds. Grunting. Covers shuffling. Muffled cries of pain.  
  
Emily instinctively reached for her gun - forgetting, momentarily, that she didn't _have_ a gun anymore - and instead grabbed the nearest item from the cabinet in the hallway outside of the bedroom. A metal candlestick. Not the most lethal way to take down an unsub, but between her FBI training and the element of surprise, she felt confident that she could hold her own in a fight, even if that fight involved a small metal object against an armed weapon.  
  
She burst into the bedroom, candlestick raised and fully prepared to crack down on the intruder's skull, when she blinked in surprise, realizing that there _was_ no intruder. JJ was the only one in the room, and the sounds she'd heard were JJ trying to prop up the Lesbian Sex book with her left hand while masturbating furiously underneath the blanket with her right.  
  
While Emily tried to compose herself, JJ guiltily flung the book to the side of the bed and raised both of her hands. "What are you _doing?"_ JJ demanded. "You scared the shit out of me!"  
  
Breathing hard, adrenaline still pumping through her veins, Emily sat down on the edge of the bed and managed to reply, "I heard noises. I thought it might be - I thought you might be in trouble ..." She dropped the candlestick and reached over to pick up the book that JJ had tossed aside. "So please, do tell me which chapter excited you so much that I could hear you from the bottom of the stairs?"  
  
JJ blushed and stammered, "I - I wasn't. I was just flipping through."  
  
"Hmmm," Emily murmured, carefully placing the two ends of the book on the bed to see which pages stood up based on the location of the newly-cracked spine. "Either it was 'S&M: An Advanced Guide' or 'Tribbing 101'. And I'm going to take an educated guess here that you're not interested in being bitten and whipped with a studded collar choking your neck."  
  
JJ blushed. "Those pictures ... _not_ the S&M ones; the other ones ... They're just so ..."  
  
Emily glanced at the images of women engaged in tribbing: the first set of pages, depicting a step-by-step series of how to do it in the missionary position, were stuck together, indicating that those were the pages that JJ was holding so tightly while she was touching herself. "One of my favorite things to do," she sighed to herself, lost in the memories of how her first lover had shown her the sense of intimacy and connectedness such a position could bring when she'd mounted her and rubbed their genitals together. How, after their breakup, Emily had often brought herself to orgasm by humping a pillow, a technique she'd never considered before meeting Stephanie.  
  
Suddenly snapped back into reality by JJ's expression - a mixture of curiosity and ... wait, was that _jealousy?_ \- Emily swallowed and asked her, "What part of it turns you on so much?"  
  
JJ averted her gaze, raising her knees to place her arms around them. "I guess ... the way it's like making love to a guy ... except there's a tenderness there that I never felt with a guy before ... and the ... the ..." Her breathing accelerated and her voice turned into a whisper. "The idea of ... of you pressed up directly against me like that ..." She shivered involuntarily. "I didn't know ... I didn't know how to ask you ... how to ask you for it ... so I just imagined it ..." Another shiver passed perceptibly through her body.  
  
Listening to JJ describe her fantasies had turned Emily on so much that she shifted her weight on the bed, trying to clamp her thighs together to reduce her growing arousal, which only served to place additional pressure between her legs and enhance her excitement. Acting on pure instinct, she stood and pulled off her clothing, standing silently in front of JJ. It was her move now. Her decision.  
  
JJ spent a moment staring at Emily's body, taking in her full breasts, her perfectly-proportioned hips, the damp triangle between her legs, and then without hesitation she removed her own clothing, placing her head on the pillow and lowering the covers, legs slightly spread, so her body was in full view of Emily's appreciative - almost worshipful - gaze.  
  
"My god, you are beautiful," Emily murmured, climbing on top of JJ to leave long, lingering kisses on her neck before working her way up to JJ's desperate, greedy mouth. Their bodies were already naturally moving together as their kisses deepened, sucking on each other's lower lips, their tongues exploring one another's mouths like it was the first time. Their breasts pressed together, nipples hardening almost painfully with each gyration.  
  
JJ's pussy was soaked, and as they slid together, their wetness mingling, Emily let out a cry of pleasure, instinctively arching her back and spreading her thighs slightly to allow for more direct contact. When JJ's body trembled underneath hers, Emily felt it throughout her core. "Spread your legs a little more and put your hands on my lower back. Use them to press me into you as hard as you can," she instructed breathlessly. "And don't stop moving against me."  
  
"I couldn't even if I wanted to," JJ groaned, spreading her legs wide and gasping at the initial clit-to-clit contact. Her fingers dug into Emily's lower back, driving the pace and movement of Emily's hips against hers. Oh god, it felt so good, so fucking good ... JJ had her head thrown back, her blonde hair splayed all over the pillow and an expression of pure ecstasy on her face. Her eyes were closed and meaningless noises escaped her throat.  
  
"Look at me," Emily demanded, grinding up and down against her at a rapid-fire pace. "Look at me."  
  
JJ opened her eyes and stared into Emily's dark, dilated pupils as she gasped, "I'm so close ... Oh god I'm so close ... It feels better ... better than anything I've ever -"  
  
"I'm fucking you ... Mmmmnnnnhhh ... I'm fucking you so hard," Emily moaned.  
  
"Yesssss," JJ hissed, her blue eyes lighting up in excitement. "Fuck me, baby."  
  
"I'm -" Emily struggled to get the words out; she'd never talked dirty like this with JJ before. "I'm fucking you with my clit. My hot, wet, throbbing clit ... Can you feel it? Can you feel it throbbing against you?"  
  
"I can feel it," JJ whimpered. "I'm so close ... Oh god ... It's your clit ... pressed against mine ... Oh, god, you're fucking me with your clit ... Oh my god ... Oh yes, oh please god yes ..."  
  
That's when JJ howled, "I'm coming!" and Emily pressed her hips into JJ's soft flesh, humping against her at an accelerated speed. She felt the first convulsion of JJ's orgasm against her own body, and it was like every convulsion that rippled through JJ also sent shockwaves through Emily's body. It was like, even though she wasn't having an orgasm of her own, she was still coming _with_ JJ, right down to the very last shudder that left JJ laying completely limp, one of her hands resting on her forehead above her closed eyes.  
  
"I never imagined ... I never knew ..." JJ murmured to herself. Emily gave her a moment, lightly kissing her neck and cheeks, understanding what an emotional experience this must have been for her, and when JJ finally opened her eyes, Emily wasn't at all surprised to see the teardrops falling from them.  
  
"I love you," Emily murmured, stroking JJ's cheek with the palm of her hand. "I love you so much."  
  
"I love you, too," JJ responded, wiping the tears away. "I don't know why I'm crying! It was amazing. It was like nothing I've ever experienced before ..."  
  
"I know, baby," Emily assured her. "I know." And she did. She did because she remembered.  
  
"But ... but you didn't ...?" JJ asked, the question implicit in her eyes.  
  
"It's nearly impossible to come simultaneously this way ... despite what you see in porn," Emily laughed softly. "I felt it when you came, though. I felt it all over."  
  
Unexpectedly, a hand reached down between them and Emily felt a finger circling her clit. Not wanting JJ to feel like reciprocation was required, she insisted, "Oh, sweetheart, you don't have to. Really."  
  
"I want to," JJ replied emphatically. "You must be close, right?"  
  
"Mmmmm ... mmmmm-hmmm," Emily groaned, immersed in the feeling of JJ's finger rapidly encircling her clit.  
  
"How close?" JJ whispered teasingly.  
  
"So close," Emily moaned. "Almost there."  
  
That was when JJ spread her legs as wide as she possibly could and glided Emily's clit against her slick pussy - practically inside of it - while she switched from a circular rhythm with one finger to a kind of pulling motion with two. Almost as though she was jerking Emily off.  
  
This was the first time Emily had ever done anything like this - the first time she'd ever had someone rapidly using two fingers to fluidly pinch the sides of her clit while using their own body to press her tip _inside_ of their hot wetness - and the sensation was indescribable. She wanted it to last forever.  
  
When JJ murmured, "look down," however, any attempt to delay her orgasm immediately went out the window. The sight of her practically fucking JJ while JJ slid her fingers up and down her clit prompted an instant, almost violent orgasm that left Emily pushing her pelvis hard against JJ's, only to feel JJ coming again, coming with her, both of their bodies shuddering and trembling as they were wracked by orgasm upon orgasm. It was like time had stopped and there was nothing else in the entire world except the exquisitely-pleasurable sensations flowing through them. Emily was still riding out her last orgasm when JJ abruptly removed her hand and struggled beneath Emily to scoot her body upward on the bed, crying out, "Oh, god, it's too much, too much!"  
  
Emily rolled off of JJ, her head hitting the soft pillow as she waited for the ringing in her ears to subside and the fuzzy, dizzying images of the bedroom to come into focus. They were both panting like dehydrated greyhounds after a race, completely immobilized on each side of the bed.  
  
Once Emily felt capable of speech again, she asked incredulously, "You learned that from the 101 section of a _book?"_  
  
"Well, I might have peeked at the 'Advanced' part, too," JJ replied teasingly.  
  
"Still," Emily marveled, "it's like you're some kind of natural -"  
  
She paused. 'Natural lesbian' was what she'd been about to say, but she didn't want to risk poisoning this moment of intimate connection between them by scaring JJ away with meaningless terminology.  
  
"Natural what?" JJ wanted to know, turning toward Emily and bending her arm to rest her head against her hand.  
  
"Natural magician," Emily finished lamely. It was the first word she could think of that didn't carry some sort of stigma for a so-called 'straight' woman.  
  
"Maybe I've just had a really good teacher," JJ giggled, still high on her post-orgasmic bliss.  
  
"Well, you definitely just earned a lifetime of extra credit," Emily breathed out, raising her head to kiss JJ's soft lips.  
  
Deep down, Emily knew she should have called JJ 'Alexandra' to remind her that, even in their most private moments, they still had to remain true to their undercover personas, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. Because despite all of their dirty talk about 'fucking' during the act itself, she also knew that they - that she, Emily Prentiss, and her partner, Jennifer Jareau - had been making love. That this was the most intimate love-making she'd ever experienced before and that JJ must have felt the same way. To destroy that now with questions about whether it had been 'real' or not would have been wrong ... Wouldn't it?  
  
Despite that nagging little voice inside of her, astutely observing: _wrong for who, Emily? Wrong for this case, wrong for JJ ... or wrong for you and your own selfish purposes?_ Emily quickly banished those thoughts from her mind and urged, "Let me hold you, baby. I just need to feel close to you right now."  
  
JJ smiled gratefully, like Emily had just uttered the very thing she'd wanted herself but had been afraid to ask for, and moved seamlessly into Emily's open arms, the gallop of their amphetamine-like heartbeats beating as one, the sticky residue on their intertwined legs combining, and their lips meeting again and again in loving, tender kisses.  
  
And even though Emily knew she was disobeying Hotch's orders for them to familiarize themselves with the town immediately upon arrival, she merely stroked JJ's arm while watching her eyelids grow heavy, nodding when JJ yawned, "I'm going to take a short nap."  
  
"I'll be here when you wake up," Emily promised, kissing her forehead.  
  
"I'll always, always be here when you wake up."


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discovering more about the case ... and about each other.

After about twenty minutes of JJ restlessly tossing and turning in her arms, Emily kissed her shoulder and observed, "Can't sleep?"  
  
"I just keep thinking about those women," JJ responded, her voice breaking. "About how we should be doing more for them than ... than _this."_  
  
This. Spending hours making love in the private - or not-so-private, depending on the presence of those surveillance cameras -safely-contained bubble of their bedroom. Clearly, JJ was finally starting to actively accept her role as a profiler in their undercover assignment.  
  
"What else can we do, baby?" Emily inquired in a neutral tone, testing her. "We're not cops. We don't even have gun permits. What can we possibly do for these women we don't even know?"  
  
"We can get to know them," JJ said, turning her body toward Emily's. "We can let them know that they're not alone, that we're all in this together. We can refuse to give into the fear we felt at the bookstore earlier and live the kind of life we said we wanted when we left New York. _That's_ what we can do."  
  
Emily smiled proudly. "Remember our first night here, when you asked me to teach you how to be brave?"  
  
JJ nodded.  
  
"I knew you didn't need me to teach you that. You're one of the bravest people I've ever known," Emily said in a serious voice, her brown eyes fixed, unblinking, on JJ's blue ones. "I knew you just needed some time to understand that the right decision is almost never the most convenient one."  
  
JJ sat up abruptly, not saying a word, and began to search for her clothing, strewn around the room. Watching her, Emily felt her heart sink and had to actively fight the tears brimming in her eyes. When she'd added the part about making the 'right' decision versus the 'most convenient' one, she hadn't been talking about this case at all - and it didn't take a profiler to know that.  
  
Still, even though Emily didn't - _couldn't_ \- expect JJ to simply leave Will, to leave her established life as a wife and a mother once this case was over and they'd returned to DC, she also couldn't prevent herself from wondering if JJ had ever seriously considered it. Had she ever bothered to take just one second to realize that when she promised to let Emily hold her every night for the rest of her life, believing that Emily was asleep and couldn't hear her, JJ had already proven that she knew, that deep down in her heart _she knew,_ the 'right' thing to do?  
  
Emily immediately banished those thoughts from her mind. This wasn't couples' therapy; this was a case. And it was long past time for Alexandra Brewster and Vivian Cook to start working it.  
  
While in town, they made a point of holding hands, snuggling against one another as they browsed in store windows, and kissing affectionately as they held mundane conversations about television shows, books, and pop culture scandals.  
  
They'd come to expect the disgusted looks, the muttering of "fucking dykes" by passersby, and the mothers furiously marching past them while shielding their children's eyes - but they were both truly stunned by the sheer number of people who approached them, introducing themselves and welcoming them into the community, asking questions about how they'd decided to move from "the city" to their local town.  
  
By the time JJ and Emily had reached the end of the main street, the sun had already set and they were both exhausted. So many phone numbers to save in their cell phones, so many invites to tomorrow night's Kitty Corner, so many disclosures about their invented personal lives while listening to each couple excitedly share their own stories about how they'd arrived in this small town in Michigan and could never reconsider moving back to a big city, not even with the recent murders. So many women blurring together, none of whom stood out as clear targets - although, of course, the team had never been able to precisely identify anything but the most obvious aspects of victimology: sexual orientation, relationship status, and relative newness to the area. And yet none of these women were new to the area; in fact, most of them had lived here long before the murders had started.  
  
Back in the car, Emily found herself reconsidering the profile: according to the locals, 'Vivian' and 'Alexandra' were the first lesbian couple to have moved there in weeks, which would logically make them the next targets. But how, exactly, did the local police department and FBI know about the supposed boxes containing the harnesses if there were no witnesses and if those boxes were removed immediately after the killings? How was it possible that the background checks on all of the straight women in the area hadn't managed to reveal anything except for one woman who apparently enjoyed using sex toys? Why hadn't the locals - who were more well-informed about this case than the cops and certainly more open about it - never once mentioned the use of sex toys as crucial to the profile of the unsub?  
  
Finally, after considering the many possibilities, Emily spoke. Using one hand to pull her black hair into a loose ponytail while keeping her eyes fixed on the road before them, she disclosed in a low voice, "I don't think it's a straight woman."  
  
JJ paused for a moment, and - to Emily's surprise - responded, "I don't think so, either. And I don't think we're going to know more than that until tomorrow night."  
  
Tomorrow night. Kitty Corner. Of course: the perfect spot for an unsub to hunt victims and use her non-threatening community status to manipulate a sense of trust that would (especially given the early closing time) render any innocent couple eager to continue a conversation or forge a newfound friendship over drinks back at their home. But what established couple would invite a single lesbian back to their home, unless ... unless ...  
  
"It's a couple!" Emily blurted out. "It has to be a couple. Think about it: if you were on a date with your boyfriend or girlfriend, would you ever ask a single man or woman back to your place? Even if you or your ... your partner ... had practically become best friends with that person? Even if you _both_ had?"  
  
"No." JJ shook her head vehemently. "No way."  
  
"But if you and your partner made friends with a couple and the bar closed and you didn't want the night to end ..." Emily's voice trailed off.  
  
"It's happened. It's happened before. I met some of my best friends that way," JJ realized. "Friendships that lasted long after the relationship was over."  
  
"Me, too," Emily agreed. "So if we're approached by a couple tomorrow and they want to continue the party at our place ... ?"  
  
"No," JJ insisted firmly. "Absolutely not."  
  
"But what if we're wrong about them and they really do just want to become our friends?" Emily wondered aloud. "And then suddenly an innocent couple finds themselves being interrogated and searched, while the real killers either lay low for a while or skip town, only to start yet another spree somewhere else?"  
  
JJ didn't answer, remaining still for a long time. Even when the car pulled into the driveway and Emily pulled the keys out of the ignition, JJ made no effort to open the door and head into the house. It was like she was frozen. Frozen with indecision.  
  
"JJ," Emily murmured, watching as the blonde's head immediately snapped up and panic flooded her eyes. "Shhhh, baby. It's OK to use our real names. It's OK in the car, remember?"  
  
Still, JJ's eyes rapidly surveyed their surroundings, her hand on the seatbelt buckle like she was about to start running. Like her 'fight-or-flight' response had suddenly kicked in, even though there was no one to fight and nowhere to flee.  
  
Emily placed her hand over JJ's and squeezed it, hoping to bring her back to this moment, to this reality. "I need to ask you something," Emily said gravely, "and I need you to respond on impulse, without thinking about it. Can you do that?"  
  
JJ nodded, staring down at Emily's hand and turning hers over to interlock their fingers.  
  
It was then that Emily asked the question, speaking slowly and carefully and suppressing the multitude of emotions practically gnawing at her throat. "If it wasn't me - if it was, say, Jordan Todd or Ashley Seaver with you on this operation - would you invite a potential unsub back to the house, after considering the risks and benefits?"  
  
"Yes," JJ answered instantly, reaching up to cover her mouth with both hands. "Oh, god ... Oh my god ... the reason I don't want to do this is because of _you._ And not because I don't trust you as an agent," she added quickly, "because I do, but ... but because I _love_ you. Oh my god ... I really do. I really do love you."  
  
But instead of the elated smile that JJ assumed she'd see on Emily's glossy pink lips, there was only a frown.  
  
"Wait a minute." The words rushed out of JJ's mouth before she could stop them. "Don't you - I mean, haven't you - I mean, you weren't lying about ... Emily, please tell me you weren't lying about -"  
  
"No, no, no." Emily shook her head insistently. "I love you more than anything in this world. That's not the problem."  
  
"Then what's the problem?" JJ inquired, confused.  
  
"The problem is that we can't pretend anymore, JJ," Emily sighed. "And not only does that make us the worst profilers to work this case ... but it also makes us the ideal victims."  
  
"So what, exactly, are we supposed to tell Hotch and the rest of the team? 'Sorry, guys, even though we've managed to create a viable undercover story, we're not going to be able to follow through because - oops! - we ruined the whole case by falling in love'?" JJ mocked harshly. "And hey, why don't I just call Will, too, and tell him just how I've damaged our relationship beyond all repair by falling in love with a fellow agent?"  
  
Emily gripped the steering wheel, stunned. "Damaged your relationship beyond all repair," she repeated, her voice monotone and devoid of emotion.  
  
"Let's not fight," JJ pleaded, leaning over to embrace Emily's stiff, unresponsive body. "We can't change what's already happened. We can't back out of our assignment. Tonight might be the last night we have together until we go back to DC and make some serious decisions about our ... our arrangement. Can we please just erase all of that, just for one night, and be _us_ again?"  
  
"Us?" Emily repeated, still refusing to respond to JJ's arms encircling her waist. "What do you mean, 'us'?"  
  
"The 'us' we were that night I first told you I had feelings for you and you told me you'd been in love with me for years. The 'us' we were in that hotel room together. The complicated, messy, uncertainty of 'us' before we took this case."  
  
"And how, exactly, are we supposed to do that?" Emily wanted to know. "We're under surveillance, remember?"  
  
"The backyard," JJ whispered, grasping Emily's chin in her own and forcing their eyes to meet. "We can talk just like we used to talk, before any of this happened, and we can ..." She blushed, allowing the sentence trail off into the air.  
  
"We do need to talk," Emily agreed. "But as far as the rest of it? JJ, I really don't think I can be your 'other woman'. A part of me wants to say that I'll agree to take whatever you feel comfortable giving me, but I know in my heart I can't live like that. I know I need you to be with me completely or not with me at all. If you want to fuck" - anticipating and relishing the way JJ winced upon hearing the vulgar word describing their sexual encounters - "then Alexandra and Vivian can go upstairs and fuck. But I won't make love to you, to the real you, until I know where we stand."  
  
"So ... it was all just 'fucking' to you?" JJ asked in an incredulous whisper.  
  
"Yeah," Emily replied dispassionately, turning her face toward the window so JJ couldn't witness the tears shining in her eyes at the lie. "Fucking you was an unspoken part of the job. I was just doing my job. Weren't you?"  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, of course," JJ stammered, unable to mask the hurt creeping into her voice, the way her fingers cramped tightly against Emily's waist. "But ... I think it's a good idea to spend some time in the backyard. So we can be together and talk without worrying about surveillance. Do you still want to?"  
  
"I always want to be with you, JJ," Emily replied, turning her body to run her fingers through JJ's blonde hair as she whispered in her ear, "Fuck, I can't even _lie_ to you to protect myself. I certainly can't make myself stop wanting you - and I've tried so hard for so long that I'm just ... I'm just so fucking exhausted by the whole thing. The whole charade."  
  
"What charade?" JJ repeated quizzically, furrowing her brow. "You just said ..."  
  
"I only said that to hurt you," Emily admitted, her dark eyes cast downward. "Every time we were ... every time we were together, I wasn't acting. If anything, I had to bite my lip and stifle the desire to scream out your name - your real name - when I came. Didn't you notice? Didn't you notice how I never once called you 'Alexandra'? It's because I couldn't. Because I wanted to believe ... I wanted to pretend ... that it was real."  
  
"It _was_ real!" JJ insisted, pressing her hands hard against Emily's thigh. "It was real for me, too. You had to know that. I mean, Emily, how could you not have known that?"  
  
Emily swallowed hard, reaching down to remove JJ's hands from her thigh. "Because of Will. Because you've spent years in an emotionally-abusive marriage, pretending to love someone you can't stand. How many times, in how many hotel rooms, in how many different cities, have I stayed up all night with you, listening to your stories about him and trying to convince you to leave him - if not for yourself, then for Henry? And how many times have you agreed with me, only to have everything go right back to the way it was the second you returned home?"  
  
JJ began to speak before Emily cut her off. "Listen, JJ, knowing how I feel about you changes absolutely nothing. Even if you feel the same way. You won't leave him and I don't know if can settle for some kind of arrangement with you. I want you ... but I want _all_ of you. And I'm not asking you to decide tonight, but I needed to tell you this now, before we return to Quantico, I'm either going to be yours completely or not at all. Do you understand, JJ?"  
  
"I understand," JJ repeated quietly.  
  
Emily leaned forward and kissed her with intensity, with desperation. "Get the blanket from the back of the car and put it near the trees while I run upstairs to the bathroom," she murmured, stroking JJ's cheek with her thumb. "If this is going to be the last night we ever spend together, I want to remember it as ours. Not as Vivian's and Alexandra's, not as 'I need to go home and wash my clothes before Will and Henry wake up,' but ours and ours alone."  
  
In the bathroom, Emily's guilty eyes stared back at her in the mirror. Because she knew that the ultimatum she'd just given JJ was bullshit. She was so head-over-heels in love with this woman that she'd settle for anything, even helping to contribute to the elaborate lies JJ would have to construct for Will's benefit, even accepting the meager crumbs of affection and time-constrained trysts in hotel rooms that their affair would require.  
  
She never could have imagined that as JJ spread the blanket down among the trees in the backyard, she was thinking, _I don't want just 'anything' with Emily. I want it all._


	13. Chapter 13

The sight Emily saw when she emerged into the backyard from the kitchen was so simultaneously adorable and humorous that she found herself unable to suppress the laughter bubbling out of her mouth.

JJ paused for a moment and looked up as she stopped struggling to put together the makeshift tent she'd discovered in the back of the SUV, watching Emily walk toward her. Hands on hips, she asked sarcastically, "Oh, so _you_ think you could do a better job of putting this together?"

"What happened to just using the blanket?" Emily replied, kissing the beads of sweat on JJ's forehead.

"I know we don't have to worry about audio surveillance back here, but even the house and the trees can't guarantee complete privacy. I mean, forget the video footage itself. Look at who else could see us ..." With her hand, she gestured toward Spencer's window, which had an ideal view of the entire backyard.

"Listen, JJ, I'm not about to exhaust myself with some trainee survival ritual before we even get started," Emily smirked. "And if Spencer wants to watch ... Well, then let him watch." To JJ's amazement, she tossed the tent aside and began to spread out the blanket.

"So ... you're an exhibitionist," JJ remarked, using her very best 'profiler voice' while raising her eyebrows and pursing her lips.

"I'm a lot of things, JJ," Emily answered, moving her lips to brush them slowly along JJ's neck. "But I do feel safer knowing that Spencer's there, keeping an eye on the house, while we're ... busy with other things."

Just then, their cell phones vibrated. Hotch. Both typed in their nonsense messages and Emily realized, "it's 10:45 pm. We haven't eaten anything since lunch. Maybe we should ..."

"There's only one thing I'm in the mood to eat right now, Emily," JJ interrupted in a hushed tone. "Can you guess what it is?"

Those words alone were enough to subdue the growling hunger in Emily's stomach as she kissed JJ passionately, easing her down onto the blanket. Their kisses were almost desperate with intensity, and when Emily opened her mouth against JJ's, their warm tongues seemed completely synchronized, their kisses deepening, and it became impossible to identify the origin of the stifled moans and whimpers emanating from each of their throats.

When Emily pulled off JJ's shirt and bra, she noticed it for the first time: the bite-marked scar around her left nipple, shocked that she hadn't seen it until now. "JJ!" she whispered, horrified, "what happened?"

"Normally I put make-up on it to cover it up," JJ responded defensively, crossing her arms over her breasts. "It's nothing."

"No, it's not 'nothing'," Emily insisted sharply, gently reaching out to uncross JJ's arms for a closer view. "Is that ... is that why you don't like it when I put my mouth there?"

JJ nodded, her blue eyes filling with tears. "One time, before we were married, Will bit me. Hard. As punishment for a quasi-flirtatious phone call he'd overheard with Morgan earlier that evening. He had this look in his eyes, this look that absolutely terrified me. He wouldn't even let me clean up the blood and use antiseptic until he'd finished ... until he'd finished fucking me. By the time I'd given birth, the wound had healed, but I still ... I still couldn't even breast-feed my own _son_. I had to pump breast milk into containers because I couldn't bear the thought of anyone's mouth on me there again. Will said I was a bad mother and that he was disappointed because I still hadn't accepted what I'd 'deserved' that night."

"I can't believe you never told me this," Emily muttered to herself, conscientiously preventing the rising sense of rage, of fury, of violent revenge fantasies, from showing on her face. "But ... that first night we were together ... you did let me lick you there. Briefly, but you did."

"It used to be different for me," JJ admitted, not meeting Emily's gaze. "I used to like it when guys did it. More than I liked having sex with them. So I thought that maybe ..."

"You thought that maybe it would be different with me," Emily finished, unable to tear her sympathetic brown eyes away from that scar. "You know, maybe it still could be. Do you want to try?"

JJ paused for a minute, closed her eyes briefly, and nodded her head. "But Em, if I tell you to stop -"

"I will never, ever, _ever_ do anything you don't want me to do. And I will never make you do anything you don't want to do," Emily reassured her. "I've told you that before but I'm telling you again. You know, JJ, we don't even have to do this if you're not sure you're ready."

"I'm -" JJ gulped in a huge breath of air. "I'm not sure, but I still want to try."

"OK," Emily said. "Why don't you lay back down on the blanket?"

Noticing the fear that flickered across JJ's face, she realized that JJ assumed Emily would start licking and sucking her breasts immediately. So Emily effortlessly removed her own shirt and bra and, grasping JJ's hand in her own, continued kissing her where they'd left off. The kisses had a comforting, almost sedative effect, as JJ melted against Emily's body, so close that each could feel the others' heart beating.

Emily started by leaving soft trails of kisses along JJ's neck and collarbone, eventually allowing her lips to brush lightly against JJ's right breast. The one without the scar. She kissed her way around it in circles, repeating the pattern by slowly dragging her tongue against the smooth flesh. JJ's nipples seemed to harden with every careful maneuver of Emily's mouth and tongue until they were practically pointed toward the starry moonlit sky above.

When Emily began to encircle JJ's breast with her tongue, carefully avoiding any contact with her nipple, it was JJ who moaned, "Emily ... I'm ready."

"You sure?" Emily asked, raising her head - and, unlike before, she didn't see fear or trepidation in JJ's eyes. Only desire.

When JJ nodded in response, Emily leaned down and flicked her tongue against JJ's rosy, pencil-hard nipple, waiting until she heard a sigh of contentment from above before doing it again. And again. And again. Ordinarily, with any other lover, Emily's brief tongue movements would have been the ultimate tease. But this was different. This was about trying to restore sensation, not about trying to enhance it. So she continued to flick her tongue against that nipple for at least five minutes before she heard JJ whimper, "Please ... put it in your mouth."

Hesitantly, Emily opened her mouth against JJ's nipple and part of her surrounding breast, rhythmically swirling her tongue in circles around the area.

"No," JJ murmured quietly. "I mean, suck on it."

So Emily did. Keeping her lips pursed and teeth retracted, she gently sucked on JJ's nipple, while her hands roamed against JJ's body, stroking her stomach and her arms and her pants-covered legs, trying to reinforce the knowledge that JJ was safe here with Emily, safe in a way she never had been or would be with Will.

"Emily, stop treating me like a victim and suck on my fucking nipple already!" JJ groaned, pushing Emily's face hard against her body, fingers tangled in the black hair beneath her.

JJ was right. It had been at least twenty minutes since she'd first started to prepare JJ for this, and the only reason Emily had stalled for so long was out of fear: not JJ's fear of being bitten, but her own fear that JJ didn't trust her enough to permit her to try and undo the damage that had been done to her. She began to suckle on JJ's nipple, lightly at first and then when JJ clawed her fingernails into Emily's scalp with increasing force, she found that she was essentially making love to that nipple with her mouth and her tongue.

"I need to come," JJ cried out suddenly, removing her right hand from the back of Emily's head to reach underneath her jeans and her panties. There was no time for unbuttoning and unzipping; she breathed in deeply to flatten her stomach and reached downward to wildly stroke her clit. If anything, the impediment of her clothing preventing her wrist from thrashing in circles only heightened her excitement. "Suck harder," she begged, her pelvis rising as her hand turned numb.

One final, deep, prolonged suck of her pencil-eraser nipple, along with Emily's hands cupping that breast and squeezing it with both hands sent JJ over the edge, her body pulsating in a rapid orgasmic crescendo that seemed to last and last and last and she didn't even realize that she'd screamed out Emily's name until the words left her throat and she'd collapsed against the blanket, her blonde hair splayed perfectly around her head and neck. Like an angel.

Breathing heavily, tears in her eyes, JJ kissed Emily forcefully, eventually breaking away to whisper "thank you" while tracing Emily's pouty lower lip with one finger. The finger she'd just used to make herself come. JJ knew the mere scent would drive Emily wild - and she was right. The look in Emily's eyes as she inhaled deeply and opened her mouth to lick that finger with her tongue was one of a starving animal desperate to feast on its prey.

But not this time. No, this time JJ was going to show Emily a thing or two. It was time to prove just how well her teacher's "lessons" had been perfected by the innocent and inexperienced student.

JJ flipped Emily over with ease and, in one swift move, unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, pulling them off along with her panties. "What happened to foreplay?" Emily murmured throatily, trying to disguise her excitement at JJ's boldness.

"I want to taste you so much right now. Do you remember the first time you had your favorite desert and then you just wanted to eat it all the time? It's like that," JJ whispered, kissing Emily's stomach. "Besides, don't tell me you're not wet." She inserted two fingers into Emily's slick pussy, eliciting a whimper, and said, with smug satisfaction, "I thought so."

JJ didn't bother starting with the slow and languorous licks like she usually did, instead sucking on Emily's clit while swirling her tongue and applying pressure on the most sensitive area, her fingers moving in and out of Emily's pussy at the same rapid-fire pace as her mouth and tongue. She was downright _hungry_ for Emily in a way she'd never been before.

Less than two minutes passed before JJ felt Emily's inner walls tighten against her fingers, along with that tell-tale throb against her tongue. JJ responded by sucking even harder and pulsing her fingers forcefully against Emily's G-spot. Seconds later, she heard Emily cry out, "Oh, my God, JJ ... I'm gonna come ... I'm gonna come so hard ..."

And hard she did. JJ quickly lost count of the number of Emily's orgasms, the number of times Emily came against her mouth and fingers, fluid gushing out of her and soaking JJ's arm all the way down to her elbow. Even Emily's legs, which had been in the butterfly position, were now wrapped around the back of JJ's head, quaking and quivering and drawing JJ even closer to her - as if it were possible, at this point, to be any closer.

When those throbs became erratic and Emily disentangled her legs from behind JJ's head, JJ knew Emily had reached her breaking point and, after withdrawing her fingers, carefully and gently licked Emily clean, swallowing the copious amounts of her tart, tangy wetness, eventually sticking her tongue inside of Emily to greedily ingest the remainder.

When JJ raised her head, Emily's eyes were closed in complete bliss. "My god, that was incredible," she exhaled softly, her breathing labored. "I love you so much, Jennifer Jareau."

"I love you more, Emily Prentiss," JJ responded, prepared to climb up next to her and hold her in a tight embrace until Emily had recovered fully from her intense multiple orgasms. She had just leaned back on her knees when she heard a voice from behind. A familiar, unmistakable voice with a New Orleans accent that prompted her to freeze in utter disbelief.

"Well, well. What do we have here?"

Emily's eyes flew open and there he was. There was Will, who had somehow been able to track them down and had been standing behind them and watching for an unknown amount of time, with his arms crossed and a purely vicious and absolutely terrifying expression of violence on his face.


End file.
